Weird Theology | Augustine and Aquinas on Virginity

[00:00:00] You're listening to Thatll Preach. This is Brian, I'm here with Paul, and we're going to continue our series called Weird Theology, where we're looking at some great thinkers of the past to look at some of the strange things that they believe, some of the odd things they believe, maybe just odd to us, maybe we're the odd ones, we can talk a little bit about that.

[00:00:18] But we've had some fun times looking at some of Aquinas' works, his speculations about whether demons can read your mind and whether we're going to enjoy food in heaven and resurrected bodies are going to be like ours here, all kinds of fun stuff. So I encourage you to check those out. And this episode, we're going to talk about virginity. Paul, are you excited about this? Excited about virginity? That's an interesting way to put it. But yes, there's some good stuff here.

[00:00:48] There you go. Well, I mean, this is a topic that might seem a little cringy, but when I think about the evangelical world and its relationship to talking about sex and virginity, sophisticated is definitely the word that comes to mind. I'm just kidding. Absolutely not. It's, again, cringy, a little odd, a little cheesy.

[00:01:13] We were just talking about this video. It's a short clip on YouTube. You can probably find it where there's this youth pastor. He's got all these high school kids on stage. I mean, it's terrible. It's painful to watch.

[00:01:25] And he's leading them in this chant song where he just goes, virginity is awesome. Virginity is awesome. It's like a rap song that he's making. And it's horrible. But apparently, as we're about to find out, men like Augustine, some of the church fathers, even Aquinas, that youth pastor was just quoting them. He was just quoting the church fathers by saying virginity is awesome.

[00:01:54] They think virginity is awesome. Because that is something that we see in some of their writings, that virginity is, in fact, awesome, which, again, sounds strange. But they probably didn't have their congregations chanting it en masse. They probably did. Even though they believed that they were less cringy than it. It was just like an atonal. Virginity is awesome. That's what it sounded like in the fourth century. We definitely have to edit that out. That was really awkward.

[00:02:25] Anyway, I figured we'd go back to our boy, Thomas of Aquinas. And also the guy that he quotes, specifically with the issue of virginity and its merits, Augustine. And, you know, Augustine's a great guy to kind of see his thinking about this. Because if you read Confessions, you know, Augustine was like, he's the guy that's like, you know, Lord grant me chastity, just not yet.

[00:02:54] It's like he's one of those guys that's, you know, he has an interesting past. He frequented, you know, prostitutes and he had a son out of wedlock, I believe. And, you know, he really is grappling. You see it with some pretty brutal honesty, which is, I think, one of the most fascinating things about Confessions.

[00:03:19] Confessions is how much he wrestles with his life of sin, the desires that he has, the ignorance that it brought into his life. And how this is a guy who's like, I mean, he's a human being. I mean, he's really struggling with these types of things and he's thinking through them in a way that's very open and revolutionary for his time in terms of an autobiography.

[00:03:42] So for Augustine, though, I think he really views the sort of the carnal pleasures, the pleasures of the flesh as it seems like he views them as things that distract him from the higher good of contemplation of God. That there are all these earthly pleasures. Even if some of them are good, they can be disordered. They can become a distraction. They cannot be in their right place, but take the place of God. And then there's actually just sinful passions and all these types of things.

[00:04:10] And so sex and bodily pleasures play a large role in his theology and what he thinks about the superiority of reason, how the body should follow reason, and how the appetites of the body can sometimes conflict with reason and all these types of things. So what's your kind of gauge as you're looking at Aquinas and Augustine, maybe some of the reading you've done of the church fathers on how they view sex and virginity?

[00:04:39] Well, maybe it's helpful to take a step back. And a lot of this discussion is downstream of how Augustine and Aquinas are thinking about fallen human nature in general. So concupiscence is the big problem. This is just the fancy word for our craving for things that we ought not, especially sensual delights, like sexual pleasures, like the paradigm case. That's, you know, everybody wants to talk about that.

[00:05:07] But also like gluttony, material possession, like lust of the eye, lust of the flesh, pride of life, all that stuff. Like there's a problem with humanity. We're broken. Our appetites don't conform to our reason. That's the sort of like big problem of humanity. And a very specific way that our appetites don't conform to reason is with sex. In fact, not just that's a specific way. That's like the most profound way.

[00:05:34] This is why all the church fathers are obsessed with sex. Not because they're like anti-sex or anti-body, but they just, they have a really good understanding of human nature. Like this really is one of the most sort of like common to humanity problems. And they think it inhibits our judgment more than anything else. It can hurt the soul more than anything else. Like Paul talks about when a man unites himself with a prostitute, they become one flesh. There's a metaphysical union.

[00:06:03] There is something special and sacred about sex. And so errors in sex are really, really, really bad for us as human beings. They inhibit us. They destroy our souls. They can, they have lots of like, think about all the societal problems when it comes to like misuse of sex, divorce, abortion, just like the destruction of the family. Like it's a really important topic. And so it's for that reason that the church fathers are really, really, really careful in their treatments of sex.

[00:06:32] And they just want to say, look, this is a really, really powerful aspect of humanity. Let's think carefully about it. And we should be temperate. We should have the virtue of temperance. Temperance is, I think we talked about this in a previous episode, but just having our appetites conform to reason. Not having too much, not craving too much or too little pleasure. Pursuing pleasure as it ought to be pursued.

[00:06:56] And then under temperance, you can have virtues specifically about sexual pleasure. So think of temperance as the big umbrella. It's about our pursuit of pleasure. Whether the temperate person pursues pleasure, whether it's food, drink, sex, whatever the case might be, pursues them in a moderate or appropriate way. Then you have like a subspecies of that.

[00:07:19] The church fathers, Aquinas, the church tradition will take two of those that are related to sex and call those chastity and abstinence. And we can talk, or chastity and virginity, I guess, because we're talking about virginity today. Chastity is the ability to be chaste within the confines of marriage. To hold back your sexual urges and only pursue sex when you ought to pursue it. And that's in the context of marriage.

[00:07:47] It's in the context of pursuing the good of your spouse, all this kind of stuff. That's one way to have the virtue of temperance with regards to sex. The other way is, and this is what we're going to focus on today, is the virtue of virginity, where you just completely abstain from all sexual pleasure. You give it up. And Aquinas and Augusta say it's not just because, it's not for lack of desire. It's not for insensibility, but it's because you've devoted yourself to God.

[00:08:17] So it's paired with a good end or a better end, what Aquinas would say. He actually thinks it's better to pursue virginity because, like Paul says, those who are married, they're devoted to the affairs of their wife and their family. But those who are not can devote themselves completely to the Lord. So Augusta and Aquinas say, look, case in point, it's not bad to get married. It's not bad to have sex in the proper context. But it's better to devote yourself to the goods of the soul, the goods of the spirit.

[00:08:46] Devote yourself to God because you're not hindered by marriage, spouse, family, and sexual desire. There's that famous quote by C.S. Lewis, and I'm paraphrasing this, but he talks about how, you know, think about people today in our culture. You can get a large audience by selling sex, basically. If you have a striptease act, you would have a bunch of people, you know, come in and want to see that.

[00:09:10] And he says, well, imagine if you went to a country where people would just flock to a theater, flock to some place simply because you brought a covered plate on the stage and then you slowly lifted the cover of the plate, let everyone see a bit of bacon, like a hamburger. You'd be like, that's really bizarre. And then you would start to think this society has a really warped relationship with food.

[00:09:35] And he's like, well, once we kind of read ourselves back into that, that's our society's vision of sex to where even I think in church settings, you know, it's, it's like people joke about it. It's, it's like, if you want to, uh, I remember that there's like this mega church that did like this thing where it was like, you know, a 40 day sex challenge. And like they had, they had, you know, it was like, it was, it was the whole like thing where they, they were just marketing their churches. Like we're a little edgy and, and, you know, kind of poking fun at it.

[00:10:03] But there's something about it where you're like, you're still using this as like, it's almost like entertainment. And it's not thinking about it in like a sacred way, giving it the thought of, this is a powerful element of the human experience and human nature, a powerful gift of God. And sometimes when we look at these old writers, we think that they're prudes. We think that they're weird and strange. And maybe to some respect, they're a little weird, right? But we also miss that maybe we're super weird.

[00:10:32] That they might, that's part of what we think is weird in them is just revealing the weirdness in us. That we're so desensitized to these things that we've so, you know, lost the sense of any sacredness, any holiness to marriage, the glory of the family, of having children, of all these types of things that we can't even have a serious conversation about it. And what you mentioned about the idea of like the appetites, the bodily appetites, and then the reason, the mind, and the interplay between the two.

[00:11:00] I think we understand that in culture today. It's just flipped where any kind of restraint upon your bodily appetites is viewed as oppressive. It's viewed as enslaving. It's viewed as backwards. And, but they're still acknowledging that there's a great power that it has. They're just sort of denying that it needs to be restrained or directed.

[00:11:25] And I think that that's an interesting thing to think through, especially as you read Aquinas and Augustine, where they're just like, man, that's ultimate slavery. If your bodily appetites dictate everything you do. And I think that bears true in reality. You know, I mean, what is addiction? Addiction, then your impulses, your bodily appetites completely pull you away from the things that you even want for your life.

[00:11:50] And so I think that we even have a sense of this, even though it's been warped. Yeah, it's one of those things where it's counterintuitive. Like modern society wants to say that any attempt to curb the appetite is a kind of slavery because now you're living in accordance with someone else's vision for your life. So the true you is the appetite. It's the, it's the part of you that craves.

[00:12:16] And so true authentic living is going out and taking life by the horns and allowing your appetites to reign free. But actually, like, like you pointed out, like in the longterm, what ends up happening is you feed your appetite so much that you become enslaved to them. And this is like the pirates of the Caribbean, Captain Barbosa. Like they live lasciviously, licentiously. They've got the gold. They're immortal. And then they turn into skeletons, right?

[00:12:41] They can't even feed their appetites because their appetites have become so desensitized and so large. And yeah, the person who spends their life cultivating their appetites, this is what modern psychology tells us. Your appetite continues to grow and grow and grow. And you have to go on to newer and newer thrills to fill the appetite. Think about like pornography usage. It's like mild, normal stuff at the start.

[00:13:06] And then we've seen like the studies suggest that people go on to more perverted kinds of things to get the same kind of dopamine hit. And so you become a slave to the thing that you keep feeding. And so like these conversations sound like they're really ethereal and abstract, but actually this is deeply practical stuff. And so when the fathers are talking about chastity, they're like talking about how do I live a good life? How do I actually live a meaningful, good human life? That's not anti-pleasure.

[00:13:35] It's just putting pleasure in its proper place. Now they'll say, okay, well, maybe sexual pleasure, you can actually live a better life without that. And we can sort of debate that. That does seem to be the view of the church fathers. Like pleasure is not bad. So eat food, drink, like all those sorts of things. They're not evil in themselves. Marriage is not evil, but it's better specifically with sexual pleasure to give that up for the Lord. And that's why virginity is a great virtue. Right. And I think that's why virginity is awesome. Awesome.

[00:14:04] And I do think that, yeah, when I read this, I'm kind of like, you know, the classic kind of critique of Augustine is very platonic. He's kind of just almost a denigration of the body. And I think there are problems with that. And I think that I don't think the solution is necessarily, you know, that you should elevate virginity perhaps to the level that Aquinas and Augustine do. Although, you know, I guess you could argue how much did they really elevate it, but that's all the thing.

[00:14:27] But it does seem like, I mean, they're going from 1 Corinthians 7, I think, when Paul says, you know, to the unmarried, if you burn with passion, if you want to get married, go get married. It's not a sin. Right. Just know that there will be worldly troubles. And Augustine talks about this. He's like, he actually kind of mentions, you know, one, it's not just that you have to consider another person, but also bearing children and raising children. There's all kinds of burdens with that. And then you could lose a child.

[00:14:57] You know, there's all kinds of pains that come with marriage. And he says that that's not a reason you shouldn't do it. He says, actually, you should be able to bear those afflictions so that you don't sin, you know, by having this unbridled kind of lust. So marriage has a good function and it's good. It's not a bad thing. And Augustine rebukes anybody who wants to denigrate marriage. Right. Well, then he says, but Paul does seem to suggest that if you are able to do it, that's the key phrase. Right. If you're able to do it. Right.

[00:15:25] If you have that gift, then you should forego marriage because you can devote more of your attention to the things of heaven. Marriage is ordered toward the earth because marriage is only going to be in this age. It won't be in heaven. And procreation is only in this age. It won't be in new heavens, new earth. But the things that virginity extols will be contemplation of God, love of God, you know. And then so and then Mary becomes sort of this paradigm where she's both a mother and a virgin.

[00:15:55] And Augustine makes a big deal about that. And he talks about her being a virgin forever. And we can debate about that. But the whole idea is that Mary kind of reveals the glory of motherhood and the glory of virginity. And that becomes, you know, a vision of the church, which is both a virgin and a mother, a mother of believers. And so he's showing that both these goods that come from these two vocations are glorious.

[00:16:18] But, you know, the reason that it seems like marriage gets kind of 1B versus the 1A of virginity is because marriage comes with some distractions from the eternal life. And it also, I guess, contains some bodily delights that it seems like Augustine isn't really keen towards. So what's your reading of that? Or at least what's Aquinas kind of working with when he thinks about that?

[00:16:47] Well, let's, I mean, as good philosophers, maybe let's just define virginity. Because you've been talking about it here. And the way that Augustine and Aquinas think about virginity actually is kind of progressive. They're not, for them, virginity is not just like a physical marker that you haven't had sexual intercourse. That's not the thing that they're concerned about. And Aquinas says this, he takes pains to spell this out over and over and over. He's like, that, like, integrity of flesh. That's not the thing that's like the holy virtue thing to aspire towards. It's consecration to God. It's a vow toward God. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:16] It's a formal thing. He says it's a mental thing. It's a kind of disposition where your end is glorifying God, serving God, union with God, contemplation of God, irrespective of what happens to your body. It can't just be that you're just a weird person and nobody wants to hang out with you. You don't get points for that. It's got to be a will.

[00:17:34] I mean, you know, Augustine actually makes the point that, like, Mary had, I don't know if this, I mean, this is speculative, but he makes the point that Mary chose virginity before, you know, being. Right. To have Christ. Yeah, yeah. That's true. But I mean, there's this idea that it's a voluntary, there's a purpose toward it. It's not just simply, you know, a state of being. Yeah.

[00:18:00] And Aquinas says, well, look, it can't be just the physical thing because that would mean that, like, everybody's born a virgin. So everybody's automatically got the virtue of virginity. That doesn't work. It has nothing to do with that physical sort of integrity of flesh. It's about the commitment to God. And so he says, virginity is the purpose of abstaining from sexual pleasure, which is praiseworthy because of its end, for it is done in order to have leisure for divine things. So you're freeing up your mental space.

[00:18:29] So as to love God. There's a great Seinfeld episode where George commits to being celibate. And then, like, he's reading all these books and becomes, like, a super genius because all the time that he would have otherwise spent thinking about sex and, like, girls and chasing girls, he can, like, actually be super productive. And Elaine walks into the coffee shop. She sees him reading this massive, like, I think it's like War and Peace. She's like, what's with all the books? And he just looks up and he's like, I stopped having sex. I think there's something there.

[00:18:58] There's something, like, practical because sex has this, like, inhibiting ability. Like, you're thinking a lot about it or you can just think about, like, your wife, your family. Once you've, like, intentionally cordoned off all that stuff, imagine how free you would be to pursue other things, right? So this is not, again, it's not something that happens to you. It's something that you choose actively. But it's interesting that Aquinas actually entertains two objections.

[00:19:25] People in his day might have thought virginity was actually a sin because he says, well, think about what's the first command that you get in the garden, right? Be fruitful and multiply. Seems like if you commit yourself to celibacy, you're basically committing yourself to violate that command. So objection, maybe virginity is a sin because it violates God's command to be fruitful. And second, maybe virginity is a sin because it's a vice of deficiency. Think about Aristotle, right?

[00:19:52] All the virtues are means or moderate positions between two extremes. So temperance is about not consuming too much pleasure, not consuming too little pleasure. Courage is about not too much fear, not too little fear. So, too, whatever the virtue would be, wouldn't be giving up all pleasure completely. But it seems like virginity is you're devoting yourself to give away your ability to pursue sexual pleasure. Maybe that's a vice.

[00:20:22] So he actually takes those two as objections at the start. And his answers are actually kind of interesting and help us understand the nature of sex. For the first one, he says, well, the command to be fruitful isn't a command to every single individual. It's a command to the human race. And he gives the example of an army. In an army, you have some people who stand sentry, some people who are medics, some people who actually pick up weapons and fight.

[00:20:48] So if everybody picked up weapons and nobody were a sentry, nobody were a medic, the whole unit would fail. So, too, he thinks. And this is Paul's argument from the church being the body. God has given different roles to different people in the church. So some people are not going to have children or not have families. And so that's actually part of God's good and healthy design, which is interesting. It's not a failure. It's actually part of God's good design for the church, for the human species. That not everybody has marriage and family, which is interesting. And we can come back to that.

[00:21:18] And he says it's not the vice of deficiency. It's not going too far in disavowing all pleasure because virginity is not about disavowing all pleasure. It's specifically about giving up sexual pleasure. So he thinks if you're a virgin, you should be going out and partying, enjoying weddings. Not partying in the sense of don't go crazy and blackout drunk. But you should be a kind of person who's fun to be around.

[00:21:47] You should go out and enjoy the world and not be an insensible creature. Because the worry is by giving up all pleasures, you might actually erode your vow to virginity. You need to go and pursue, like go out and enjoy nature, have some hobbies. Like don't just be a bore. Don't just be like a cosmic killjoy. That's not what it is to have the gift of virginity. It's a very specific kind of pleasure that you've given up.

[00:22:12] It's not like permission to just go out and be a boring, insensible person. So I found those two things kind of interesting. That's good stuff. I mean, you clearly can't say that virginity is a sin. I mean, because then, I mean, Christ. That's right. Paul, you know, and Paul clearly said, I mean, you know, Christ even talks about people being made eunuchs for the kingdom. And Paul talking about, you know, he's like, look, I mean, you can devote yourself to the Lord. But that's what he's not going.

[00:22:40] So you can just like have your weekends free and like pursue your hobbies. That's not what he's talking about. But he's viewing both marriage and virginity as order toward the kingdom of God, right? And glorifying God. And so it's like, if you're married, that's not just for you to just, you know, have these, just to enjoy. I mean, you should enjoy it, but there's actually a goal toward it, right? To create a family.

[00:23:06] I mean, he talks about, you know, Augustine talks about, you know, mothers essentially creating, you know, there's no spiritual birth for humans if there's no fleshly birth, you know, and that mothers are also to raise their children to, you know, follow Christ and all these types of things. And you think about like Paul's instructions about widows. And Aquinas talks about this, I think, where he talks about widows after their husband has died. There's an option for them to just remain unmarried.

[00:23:34] I mean, they're free to marry if they want, but if they're going to remain unmarried, they need to serve. They need to pray. They need to be models of faithlessness. They need to serve the church. It's not sort of just avoiding people. And I think it's to your point about the person who's, you know, who swears or vows to virginity. They're supposed to live a full life. They're not supposed to be just recluses, you know, just living in a mountain somewhere. And they're supposed to use that as a service to people.

[00:24:02] Now, one thing that Augustine talks about, and I think even Aquinas mentions this a little bit, is that there's a particular danger with virginity in which you can become proud. You can actually view it as, you know, okay, well, you know, Paul says it's more preferable, and I'm doing the more preferable thing. And so, and Augustine's like, don't you ever look down on a married woman, right? First of all, she might want to be a martyr. She might be martyred, and then she's trumped you, because that's a greater, sacrifice of earthly pleasure, you know, than what you're doing.

[00:24:30] But he also says that your only ability to do this, and this is very Augustinian, I guess you could say, is by the grace of God. Like, it's a gift. It's not something you can be like, I'm just better than you. It's something that's freely bestowed by God's grace, which is an interesting way to think about singleness. Because I think sometimes in, you know, evangelical church culture, the gift of singleness is more circumstantial. Like, well, you're not married, so you have the gift of singleness right now.

[00:24:59] Wow, I'm right here, bro. Yeah, right. You are not gifted. But I don't know that that's always the most precise way to think about it. Because it seems like Paul and Augustinian Aquinas, when they view the gift of singleness, they mean an actual sort of capacity to, you know, live a chaste life that's ordered toward God, and not simply just waiting in faithfulness

[00:25:27] as you are hoping providentially to have those desires fulfilled. But what do you think about that? Yeah, I think it's interesting. Aquinas even says at one point that a married person can have the virtue of virginity better than someone who's devoted their lives to virginity. Okay, talk about that. The distinction between the mental and the physical, or what Aquinas calls the formal and the material kinds of virginity, where if it's just about like physical integrity of your flesh, like if that's the thing that you're concerned about,

[00:25:57] but you're, like you said, you're so prideful, you think you're better than everybody else, maybe even deep down, you're like super lustful, right? The fact that you have taken this external vow, and you haven't done anything external, that's not enough to give you the virtue of virginity. Because virginity is again about this disposition to forsake pleasure for the sake of divine things. It's about pursuing God. And he thinks actually some married people, they might be like, yeah, well, you know,

[00:26:25] maybe I'm the kind of person if my spouse dies, maybe I just won't marry again, because I can just devote myself to God, there are more important things, or they're the kind of person, and he said this, he says this about heaven, because in heaven, there's not going to be any sex. The virtue of virginity persists into heaven in every Christian, because we will be forsaking sexual pleasure for the purpose of divine things. That is a virtue that you can begin cultivating even now as a married person, according to Aquinas, which is really interesting.

[00:26:54] So a married person can have the virtue of virginity better than, or to a greater extent than someone who's actually taken a vow of celibacy, because one person's heart is in the right place and the other person's is not. So somebody who's married, they would say, you know, even though they're not taking a vow of celibacy, they're still ordering their life toward the things of eternity.

[00:27:22] And they're not even using marital sex as just purely just this sort of carnal pleasure, but they view it as part of a bigger thing that can glorify God and, you know, all these other things. And I think that that's where, you know, I mean, this is why I think it's, I don't know that I would agree that, one, I don't know if people should take vows of celibacy now. I don't know that Paul's necessarily saying, you make a vow for celibacy. You might just be identifying that

[00:27:50] some people might have a capacity to be able to, you know, not, that they have a unique grace to not be distracted by the desire for marriage or sex or even children, you know, generating children. And maybe that's just all he's commenting on. But I think that it is one of those things where, yeah, how much of that can you transfer over to unwanted?

[00:28:21] So now I think there's something to where, like, if providentially you're single, you still need to order your life to God. And I think there are some aspects of what they talk about regarding virginity that can kind of give dignity to the fact that you're like, I'm still going to remain chaste and devoted to God, even though this isn't a vow or anything like that. Even though it may not have the gift, I'm still going to be faithful and I'm still going to, you know, try to put to death the deeds of the flesh and all these types of things. But I think the difference is

[00:28:51] you're doing that sort of temporarily because you're also trying to seek the good of marriage. Because that's what Paul says. He's like, either you pursue the vocation of marriage, you get married, you have kids, you do that whole thing, or you order your life toward, you know, abstaining from that. And that gives you more time to devote yourself to these, you know, heavenly pursuits. He doesn't have a category of like, you just don't like to commit or like,

[00:29:20] or even just marriage scares you or things like that. Like he just goes, look, cause he, and Augustine kind of talks with him. He's like, look, the stakes are pretty high. Like you don't want to be in this limbo for that long. Um, and so I think that's especially hard today because I just think the conditions and the way culture is marriage is less and less a thing that people desire, or there could be even economic factors that make it less feasible, all these types of things. And so I just think there's no way around

[00:29:50] the fact that it's like, yeah, that's a bummer, you know, because you have people kind of caught in between and that's just not a good thing. Well, here's, here's one reason why you might think that taking a vow of celibacy could be preferable to just waiting around for marriage. So let's say you're like 30 years old, 40 years old, 50 years old. You're not married. 30 years old, a philosopher. No, just kidding. Go ahead. And you're, if you're,

[00:30:20] if you're not married, but you're thinking about marriage, that is a kind of like diverting of your attention, right? Your attention is still, even if you're doing all these great things that Paul's talking about, you're investing in your church, you're loving the Lord, you're stewarding your gifts, you're stewarding your singleness, but you still want marriage. There's nothing wrong with that. But think about how much of your attention is now kind of like split, like your, your mental time, your prayer life, your emotions, like maybe you're dating, like it does,

[00:30:50] there is a cost there. So you might think that at some point, and I don't know what prudence would dictate, at some point, maybe you just tell yourself like, okay, like I'm not going to get married, maybe not a vow, but like you tell yourself, okay, this is not going to happen. So then you can free up your resources, your cognitive resources, your attention, your time, your prayer life, to actually do the things that are, you know, the divine things, as Paul calls them, things that are of the Lord. And maybe if someone comes around

[00:31:18] and just like God providentially puts them on your path, yeah, great. Like that's fantastic. Um, but the more you spend time thinking about it, the more you spend time trying to get married, the more it takes away from, um, the ability to do the things of the Lord, as Paul says. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing again. Right. Just one reason to think that what, why might someone consider closing the door? It's to more, you know, easily do the things of the Lord more easily. Yeah. Or into other communities. I don't know. That could be circumstantial too. I mean,

[00:31:48] sure. At different stages in your life, you know, I think that's just a reality. You know, I don't know that you should be deciding on celibacy when you're 18 or 20, you know, like I think that that's the time when people, you know, and, but I think as you get older, there's just a reality of like the likelihood of marriage changes different, you know, generally speaking. Um, and I think it may be a helpful thing to read this and go, okay, you know what?

[00:32:18] It's like, I'm not like a defective Christian, you know, providentially, as far as I know, this is, you know, the, the card that the cards that God has dealt me, but there's still something I can do. And there's something that there's still glory that I can, uh, there's still glory that I can run after. There's still, you know, something powerful that can happen within me and through me, you know, as I dedicate myself to God and still leave open the door for maybe if there's,

[00:32:47] if marriage is possible, I'm going to explore that option. Um, but you know, I think it's, it's one of those things where that, that can be a hard pill to swallow. Um, and I think even when you talk about how it applies to marriage, I think it can be, you know, I think it's, I think there's a good focus on the family, you know, and there's a ordering of your loves and the prioritizing, prioritizing of your family and your children, these types of things.

[00:33:15] But I do think that that can almost become too insular at times where the household is not directed outward as a place, you know, as, as a place where, you know, strangers can come in and, and where you're actually building up the community around you. It just becomes a sort of insular unit. I think that could be a dangerous thing. And so I think the big mental switch is whether it's, we're talking about, you know, singleness, virginity, all that stuff or, um, marriage.

[00:33:43] It's trying to like zoom out a little bit and just go, what are both of these four? Like, what's the end goal of both of them? Like, what is the thing that Paul is comparing against to go, if you can do this, do that. If you can't do this. And it's the things of God. Um, and I think that that's, you know, that's sobering for whether you're married or not. But it's still, I mean, if we really want to give Augustine and Aquinas their due, they are still saying something radically controversial.

[00:34:12] Like they're saying an ideal marriage where if you're, you know, you're not insular, you're loving your community, you're investing children, missions, all this stuff, ideal marriage. And then ideal single life. The ideal single life is better than the ideal marriage because, and this is, I'm just going to read this little section from Aquinas. He says, the divine good takes precedence over the human good. And you're talking about singleness versus marriage. And then he's going to say, the good of the soul is preferable to the good of the body. Again,

[00:34:41] virginity is about making the soul good. Whereas marriage is ordered towards the good of the body, both yours and your spouse's. So the contemplative life is better than the active life. Again, he's comparing soul versus body. So it's these three triads. The divine is better than the human. The, um, the soul is better than the body and the contemplative is better than the life of action. So virginity is directed to the good of the soul, the contemplative life in the things of God. Whereas marriage is merely directed to the good of the body,

[00:35:10] the bodily increase of the human race, the body of action, the active life. Since the man and the woman who embraced the married life, think about the things of the world. Here's quoting first Corinthians seven, without a doubt, virginity is therefore preferable to him. He says, without a doubt, he's just like, this is obvious because those are single the rest of their life. It's like, maybe they're a little biased. I don't know. Should we grant these assumptions? So like, I don't know. Divine, the divine marriage is not a divine good.

[00:35:39] Marriage is not about the good of the soul. It's merely the good of the body. Yeah. That's strange. The contemplative life is better than life of action. It's very, I don't know. I mean, like you pointed out how marriage sanctifies you, right? Like you have children, those sanctify you, you lose a child. Imagine what that does to you. Like it's not, I think there's a kind of like the way that they're thinking about marriage. Maybe they're not thinking about it's sanctificatory dimension in the human life. Right. That's a good point. I mean, the things that Augustine's like,

[00:36:09] here, here are some of the troubles Paul might be thinking about. Um, and I don't even know if that's really what Paul was thinking about, but I'm like, I don't know. Those things actually could, yeah, they actually can make you holy. They can actually draw out a deeper devotion in you. I think what marriage does for you, the sharing of your life with someone. I don't, I think to call that a distraction or, I'm like, I don't think that that's what Paul's talking about. I think it's, I mean, this is just my kind of gloss of what Paul's saying. I think there was probably some persecution happening.

[00:36:40] And Paul's like, look, you get married. It's a lot of liability. You know, it might be worth it just to stay single. If you, if you're able to handle it, if you're able to handle it, that's good. You're going to be able to pack light. You're going to be able to weather this persecution and you'll be okay. Um, but even then, if you want to get married, get married and just know that's going to, it's going to be, it's going to make some of the trials coming ahead a little more difficult, but Hey, that's not to say, don't do it. It's just to say, you need to know what you're doing. It's preferable.

[00:37:10] I think for you to abstain in this situation, because he talks about a present distress. I might be butchering all the exact words. So that that's where I think I would depart probably from where Aquinas and Gustin are going at where I'm like, I think you're reading too much into what Paul's saying. Um, although I do think that a stronger cases with widows and the option not to marry after they die, but then they're not, but then that's not necessarily of our lifetime virginity. That that's, I think they're saying like, it's practical or predatory. It's practical. Yeah.

[00:37:39] And it's also saying like, don't feel like a burden. If you're like, you probably, by the time you're a widow, you know, he says young widows get remarried, right? He's like, get married. If you, if you lose your husband, get married, it's, it's for your own sake, all that stuff. Um, and older ones, I think he recognizes the realities of that. And he says, look, I mean, you can't get remarried or, I mean, there's also a great opportunity for you to still serve the church and be devoted in that way. And so I think you can explain it like that and you don't have to get all these extra trapss.

[00:38:08] Things of like virginity being getting extra, extra brownie points or something like that. Yeah. Maybe it's easier. Maybe it's easier in practice to live a life devoted to the Lord as a single person than as a married person, maybe in practice, because we see so many examples of marriages that turn inward on themselves, become focused on the world. Um, you know, how to deal with like in-laws or just like material possessions and like all this sort of stuff.

[00:38:35] Like there's a kind of like inward bentness to the way we currently practice marriage. And you might think that's just in practice, not in principle. There's a way that you can do marriage. That's holy. That's pleasing to God. That's, you know, that the way that the Christian is called to live out the married life. But in practice, there can be a lot of distractions and difficulties that make it not as easy to live a life devoted to the Lord. Maybe that's true. And so if we read Paul is just saying in practice, practically can be difficult.

[00:39:04] But I think what Augustine and Aquinas want to say is that in principle, ideally the single life is better than the ideal married life. That just seems wild to me. It seems like they're just two, two sets of goods. We can even call them incommensurable goods, two ways of living your life that are just good and faithful. And you can't really compare them against each other. And one is more is the norm and the other is not. I think that that's true. You know? And I think that that's the idea where, I mean, again,

[00:39:32] like I thought that was a great point you brought up about the person who takes a vow of celibacy. They can still, they should still party. You know, they should still be around people being involved because it's like, if you're just, you know, you're like, ah, I don't want to get married. I don't want to deal with people. I don't have to deal with all that stuff. I don't have to deal with the burden of kids. I don't want, you know, deal with a relationship. That's not, that's not a healthy outlook. Right. You know? And you're like, I want to be in my books and just like pray all the time. I'm like, okay, really? Is that really, you know, really what's going on? And so I think, you know,

[00:40:02] it's probably a very few people that should be, you know, devoting themselves to a life of singleness. And there's usually a great call or great admission to that. And I, I don't know. I just, maybe I'm just cynical. I'm just like, you know, when people say that, I'm like, you just, you just want no more questions to be asked about your life, you know, other, other aspects, but to their credit, a lot of these like Roman Catholic, um, celibate communities,

[00:40:31] before you take a vow of celibacy, you do have to go through years and years of discernment and, you know, trying it out for a while. And you go through different stages of development where you give up different sorts of things. And by the end of like seven or eight years, then you can say like, all right, I'm ready now to take the vow of celibacy. So it's not something that's entered into lightly. So, you know, to their credit, they're trying to weed people out who are maybe doing this for bad reasons, or maybe they overestimate their own chastity abilities.

[00:41:01] The head monk is like, Hey man, you shouldn't, you should look into getting married. We need to, we need to settle this. Yeah. And I think it's, again, it's the intention of it. That's what separates. It's not just, sometimes I'm like, I like, I just get busy and then I won't eat for, you know, I won't eat breakfast and lunch. I can't look back and go like, well, I was fasting today. That's not, that's not how that works. No, it's like, you just didn't eat. You know, the fasting has to be decided beforehand as intentional. And so, yeah, I think it's, again,

[00:41:31] everything that they're talking about, even if it's a little overblown, I think what they're trying to say is it's a worthy pursuit to want to devote your time. I mean, they are saying a little more than that, but I think probably what the apostle Paul would say is, you know, there is, if, if the kingdom of God, if the gospel is radically reoriented, reoriented your life, it's got to affect everything in your life, including how you view your future, how you view your time, how you view your commitments.

[00:41:59] And that has something to say regarding how you think about marriage. Right? And I think, again, no shame in getting married. In fact, some of you need to get married and it's a good thing for you. And if you can handle not doing it, because it would, it would make mission easier. If there's persecution on stuff, go for it. Um, they probably, I mean, I just don't think Paul had in mind, uh, modern society, you know,

[00:42:26] that there would be just rampant divorce and, you know, unwanted singleness, I guess you could say, or all these types of things. And so that makes it a little trickier. Um, but I still think there's something, there's still a light at the end of the tunnel when, you know, everything that Aquinas and Augustine are saying is this is not the only life, you know? And so there's some comfort you get in, even if you're in a hard marriage or, you know,

[00:42:57] you can't have biological children or you don't get to be married and you want it. That, uh, one God is still working in the midst of that. And two, there's still something glorious he wants to do in and through your life. That is going to be eternally significant. And I think to that respect, there's something to learn. We had a youth pastor in high school who told us point blank, most of you guys are pure for lack of opportunity.

[00:43:27] Don't think that you're this like bastion of, and he just stared at you. He just stared at you. He's like, I'm talking about you, Paul. No, pulled the Paul washer. I don't know why you're clapping. I'm talking about you. Yeah. Oh man. That's our nerdy. We started off with a youth pastor anecdote. We ended with a youth pastor anecdote. Perfect. Perfect. There we go. Well, I appreciate you guys listening to this episode. And, uh, again, I think it's, you know, we'll put in the show notes,

[00:43:56] some of the resources we used and I hope that this is a helpful, uh, helpful listen for you. Make sure you check out our website and, uh, follow us on Apple podcast. You can subscribe and leave a nice review. Helps out a lot. Find all the links in our show notes. Thanks for listening.