What Early Christians Thought about Marriage and Sex

Christians have never completely agreed on anything, but the general view of early Christians towards marriage, sex, and procreation was that they were bad. Of course, even the Christians who believed that these things were bad disagreed over exactly how bad they were. Some of the more radical early Christians believed that sex was so evil that it was better for a person to be literally burned alive than for them to marry and have sex with their spouse.

Most early Christians were more moderate; they believed that marriage and sex were essentially necessary evils. They thought that it was morally acceptable for a man and a woman to marry and have sex, but that it was better for a person to remain unmarried and celibate if possible and that a person should only marry if they couldn’t control themself otherwise.

Jesus’s thoughts on sex and marriage

Unfortunately, we know very little for certain about what the historical Jesus believed about sex and marriage, because he never wrote any of his teachings down and most of what we know about him comes from the canonical gospels, which were written several decades after his death by people who almost certainly never knew him while he was alive on Earth.

As I discuss in this article I published in October 2019, though, the teachings attributed to Jesus in the surviving gospels aren’t exactly supportive of marriage as an institution. In the Gospel of Mark 12:24–25, Jesus tells a group of Sadducees that marriage will not exist in the coming Kingdom of God. Here is the passage, as translated in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV):

“Jesus said to them, ‘Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.’”

Since the Synoptic Gospels portray Jesus as teaching that his followers should live as though the Kingdom of God had already arrived, it follows that, if he really said this, he must have thought that it was better for people to remain unmarried and celibate.

In the Gospel of Matthew 19:10–12, we are given a striking conversation between Jesus and his disciples that, at the very least, reveals a lot about how early Christians thought Jesus thought about marriage and sex. The conversation goes like this, as translated in the NRSV:

“His disciples said to him, ‘If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.’ But he said to them, ‘Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.’”

It is difficult to know what to make of this passage, but, if we interpret it literally, Jesus seems to be saying that any man who cannot control his sexual urges should cut his own testicles off to get rid of those urges.

ABOVE: The Pharisees and Sadducees Come to Tempt Jesus, painted between 1886 and 1894 by the French painter James Tissot

Paul’s teachings on sex and marriage

The earliest surviving Christian writings are the authentic letters of the apostle Paul. Paul remained unmarried and celibate for his entire life and his opinion towards marriage expressed in his surviving epistles is decidedly negative. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians 7:1–9, Paul says that, ideally, all people should remain unmarried and celibate and that people should only marry if they find they simply cannot resist the urge to have sex because it is better to marry than to be filled with lust. Paul writes, as translated in the NRSV:

“Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: ‘It is well for a man not to touch a woman.’ But because of cases of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”

“This I say by way of concession, not of command. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another a different kind. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. But if they are not practicing self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.”

Paul goes on to explain his reasoning later in the First Epistle to the Corinthians 7:25–25. He gives two big reasons why he think that it is best for a person to remain unmarried and celibate. First, Paul warns that the end of the world is imminent and that those who are married will suffer more greatly in the coming tribulation because they will be forced to watch their spouse suffer.

Second, Paul warns that marriage is a distraction from God, because a person who is unmarried and celibate only has to worry about pleasing God, but a person who is married has to worry about pleasing both God and their spouse. Thus, he argues that people should remain unmarried and celibate, so that they will be able to serve God without any distractions. Paul writes, as translated in the NRSV:

“Now concerning virgins, I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. I think that, in view of the impending crisis, it is well for you to remain as you are. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you marry, you do not sin, and if a virgin marries, she does not sin.”

“Yet those who marry will experience distress in this life, and I would spare you that. I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.”

“I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord, so that they may be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to put any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and unhindered devotion to the Lord.”

Basically, Paul believed that it was acceptable for a man and a woman to marry and have sex, but he believed that Christians should only get married if it was absolutely necessary for them to marry in order to prevent themselves from engaging in fornication.

ABOVE: Paul Writing His Epistles, painted between circa 1618 and circa 1620 by the French painter Valentin de Boulogne

Married apostles

We should not, however, imagine that all early Christians were unmarried and celibate. Indeed, even though Paul claimed that unmarried celibacy was the best condition for a Christian to be in, he did maintain that Christians had the right to get married if they felt it was necessary.

Paul even explicitly tells us that some of the apostles, including Simon Peter and Jesus’s brothers, were married. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians 9:3–5, Paul writes, as translated in the NRSV:

“This is my defense to those who would examine me. Do we not have the right to our food and drink? Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?”

Evidence that Peter was married is also found in the gospels. The Gospel of Mark 1:29–31 describes Jesus as healing Peter’s mother-in-law. The passage reads as follows in the NRSV:

“As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once.”

Catholic apologists often try to argue that Peter’s wife must have been dead by the time he became a follower of Jesus because they don’t want to admit that the man they consider to have been the first Pope was married. There is absolutely nothing in the text to suggest that Peter’s wife was dead, however, and Paul’s mention of her in 1 Corinthians 9:3–5 strongly suggests that she was still alive at the time when Paul was writing the letter, which would have been in around 53 or 54 AD—around two decades after Jesus’s death.

If Peter had been able to write and he had written about marriage, we can imagine that he probably would have been more enthusiastically in favor of it than Paul was. Unfortunately, we will never know what Peter thought on the subject because, as far as we know, Peter never wrote anything.

There are two letters attributed to Peter included in the New Testament, but both of these are forgeries and they very clearly weren’t even written by the same author. It is highly probable that Peter was, in fact, illiterate, especially considering the fact that, in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles 4:13, both Peter and John are described as “ἀγράμματοι” (agrámmatoi), which means “without writing.”

In other words, there were some Christians in ancient times who were married and who did have sex. On the other hand, as we shall see in a moment, there were other Christians in the ancient world who held views so restrictive that they make Paul look downright liberal.

ABOVE: Christ Healing the Mother of Simon Peter’s Wife, painted in 1839 by the English painter John Bridges

The ancient view of sex as death

People in the ancient world did not all think alike and different people thought about sex in a wide variety of different ways. I discuss a few ancient Greek perspectives on sex in this article I wrote in March 2020. One view of sex that was common in certain philosophical circles, though, held that sex was inherently tied to death and that, every time a person had sex, they came a little bit closer to dying.

In the ancient world, there was no reliable form of birth control and sex was inextricably associated with procreation. The reason why people had sex was to produce offspring and the reason why they needed to produce offspring was so that their offspring could replace them when they died. Thus, having sex was seen as one step in the process of dying.

The third-century AD Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtios records in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers that the great sage Pythagoras of Samos (lived c. 570 – c. 495 BC) warned his followers that sex was always dangerous and unhealthy. Diogenes Laërtios writes, as translated by R. D. Hicks:

“Of sexual indulgence, too, he [i.e. Pythagoras] says, ‘Keep to the winter for sexual pleasures, in summer abstain; they are less harmful in autumn and spring, but they are always harmful and not conducive to health.’ Asked once when a man should consort with a woman, he replied, ‘When you want to lose what strength you have.’”

This view of sex heavily influenced some forms of ancient Christianity. Many early Christians believed that, because Jesus had given Christians a path to immortality, it was wrong for them to have sex, because having sex was for mortals and, if they engaged in sexual activities, they would be making themselves mortal and thereby granting death a victory.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an ancient Roman imaginative bust of Pythagoras on display in the Capitoline Museums

The Acts of Paul and Thekla

In the Acts of Paul and Thekla, a Christian novella written in around the middle of the second century AD or thereabouts, the apostle Paul is portrayed as preaching a very different message from the one that was preached by the historical Paul. In the Acts of Paul and Thekla, Paul’s message is all about the necessity of total abstinence from all sexual activities. Paul is portrayed as preaching, as translated by Alexander Walker:

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God: blessed are they that have kept the flesh chaste, for they shall become a temple of God: blessed are they that control themselves, for God shall speak with them: blessed are they that have kept aloof from this world, for they shall be called upright: blessed are they that have wives as not having them, for they shall receive God for their portion: blessed are they that have the fear of God, for they shall become angels of God: blessed are they that have kept the baptism, for they shall rest beside the Father and the Son: blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy, and shall not see the bitter day of judgment: blessed are the bodies of the virgins, for they shall be well pleasing to God, and shall not lose the reward of their chastity; for the word of the Father shall become to them a work of salvation against the day of His Son, and they shall have rest for ever and ever.”

The plot of the novel revolves around Thekla, a young virgin who hears Paul’s message. Upon hearing Paul preach about the importance of abstinence, she decides to dedicate her life to God and to never engage in any sort of sexual activity. Thekla’s mother, afraid that her daughter will listen to Paul and refuse to marry, orders for Paul to be imprisoned. Thekla, however, bribes the guard to let her visit Paul’s cell.

Thekla’s family finds her with Paul and she and Paul are both taken to the governor. At Thekla’s mother’s request, Paul is sentenced to be whipped and expelled from the province. Thekla herself is sentenced to be publicly burned at the stake, so that all women in the city will know that they must marry and have sex with their husbands to bear them offspring.

Thekla accepts her martyrdom, believing wholeheartedly that, it is therefore better to be burned alive than to have sex, because she will be given eternal life in Heaven on account of her virginity. At the last moment, however, God miraculously saves Thekla from being burned alive. The rest of the story revolves around Thekla’s efforts to resist being forced to have sex. At multiple points in the story, men try to rape her, but, with God’s help, she manages to fend them off.

ABOVE: Fresco dating to the fifth or sixth century AD from the Grotto of Saint Paul at Ephesos, depicting Paul and Thekla

The Church Fathers on marriage and sex

The church historian Eusebios of Kaisareia (lived c. 260 – c. 340 AD) claims in his Ecclesiastical History that, when his hero, the scholar and theologian Origenes of Alexandria (lived c. 184 – c. 253 AD), was a young man, he took a very literal reading of Jesus’s exhortation in the Gospel of Matthew 19:12 and actually paid a physician to surgically remove his testicles.

This story is probably apocryphal, since Origenes never mentions anything about having castrated himself in any of his extant writings. Furthermore, Origenes is known for his tendency to interpret scripture allegorically rather than literally and his own Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew even explicitly states that only a complete idiot would interpret Matthew 19:12 literally.

Regardless of whether Origenes really castrated himself, though, it is certainly true that many early Christians did castrate themselves. One of the first canons issued by the First Council of Nikaia in 325 AD was a prohibition against self-castration. The council surely would not have felt compelled to issue such a proclamation unless there really were men castrating themselves in order to follow Jesus.

ABOVE: Illustration from a fifteenth-century French manuscript of Origenes of Alexandria emasculating himself. Medieval manuscript illustrators loved showing him in the act of cutting off his own genitals, even though Eusebios actually claimed that he hired a doctor to do it for him.

Contemporary Christian views on marriage and sex

Most Christians today view heterosexual marriage not as a necessary evil, but rather as a positive good. This is a radical departure from the general view of ancient Christianity. Because romantic love is generally treated in the New Testament as a distraction from God, modern Christians have struggled to find verses praising it.

Most of the passages that are commonly read at weddings that most people think are about marital love are really about a different kind of love. For instance, as I talked about in this article from February 2020, if you go to a Christian wedding in the United States, it is almost inevitable that the minister will read 1 Corinthians 13:4–7. Here is the passage as translated in the NRSV:

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

When this passage is read in English and out of context, it is easy to see why so many people think that it is about the love between a husband and wife, but, if you read in passage in context and in the original Greek, it becomes abundantly clear that Paul is not talking about marriage. Here is the passage in the original Koine Greek:

“ἡ ἀγάπη μακροθυμεῖ, χρηστεύεται ἡ ἀγάπη, οὐ ζηλοῖ, [ἡ ἀγάπη] οὐ περπερεύεται, οὐ φυσιοῦται, οὐκ ἀσχημονεῖ, οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ ἑαυτῆς, οὐ παροξύνεται, οὐ λογίζεται τὸ κακόν, οὐ χαίρει ἐπὶ τῇ ἀδικίᾳ, συγχαίρει δὲ τῇ ἀληθείᾳ· πάντα στέγει, πάντα πιστεύει, πάντα ἐλπίζει, πάντα ὑπομένει.”

The Greek word Paul uses in this passage that is usually translated as “love” is ἀγάπη (agápē). In the context of the New Testament, this word generally refers to a sentiment of charity and goodwill towards all human beings. You could translate it as “beneficence” or “goodwill.”

When Paul wrote this passage, he was describing how a Christian should behave towards all human beings in general—not specifically how a Christian should act in the context of a romantic relationship. Unfortunately, because most English translations of this passage use the word love, which tends to be used in colloquial speech to refer to romantic love, people have misinterpreted this passage as an ode to romantic love.

ABOVE: Fresco from the Catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter in Rome, dating to the fourth century AD, depicting early Christians having an agape feast. In the Epistle to the Corinthians 13:4–7, Paul was talking about love in a universal, charitable sense.

Why this matters

Things have changed a lot since ancient times. We live in a world where right-wing Christians talk constantly about the supposed importance and sanctity of marriage. They claim that “family values” are the foundation of our society, but that evil liberals are destroying these values. From listening to them, you’d get the impression that Christians always believed that getting married and having children was the ideal.

Meanwhile, in our culture, it is generally expected for young people to get married and start families. Unmarried celibacy, which was once considered the preferable condition for a person to be in, is widely seen as an indication that a person is a failure.

I don’t think that we should return to the old view of marriage and sex as necessary evils. I do, however, think it is important for people to remember that Christians once thought of them this way. Looking at how people have thought about things in the past can help us to realize the limitations of our own ways of thinking and help us to understand that the way we think now isn’t necessarily the way people have always thought.