gentleexit

Here's a quick overview

This was a conference for the south of Spain so local but it influenced the later council of Arles (you can trace canons from one to the other) and featured Hosius, a key player at Nicea, in Church history. This isn't a bunch of hicks off making their own little rules.

And the rules are far from special. They break into "what outsiders you can marry", "when can you move on", "what about sex beyond marriage". The stuff of marriage. Another marriage commonplace - status. They had that too. Christianity was getting more high status people. But what if a Christian girl couldn't find a Christian of the same status. Could she marry an "eligible" gentile? No. No, no.

All this still begs the question: when did the notion of "Christian Marriage" take hold? When did a phrase like "only broke the laws of marriage" become unthinkable?

bacht

Right, Paul's celibacy and Jesus' Cynic teachings would have been provisional behaviours until the nearing end of the world

By the mid-2nd C the urgency dissipated, and it's back to the usual rules for the majority of believers

andrewcriddle

Isn't the early Christian challenge to the traditional family deeply related to its apocalyptic/eschatological concerns ?

IE early christians downgraded the passing on of values to the next generation because of their imminent expectations of the Lord's return. I don't think they were putting forward a long-term non-eschatological alternative to the patriarchal household.

Andrew Criddle

Bob K

The influential US Founders were Deists, not Xns.

http://www.bobkwebsite.com/evdnceofdeismofusfndrs.html

Ben C Smith

I think it is, yes. Just as I think that the early Roman imperial family values were deeply related to Augustan eschatological concerns.

I agree for the most part (slight modification below), and I suspect that passages such as Micah 7.6 were mined for this kind of eschatological antipatriarchal content.

OTOH, I do not think we can ignore the heavy patriarchal content of the early Roman imperial propaganda, as well as the early Christian reactions against this propaganda in other respects. I think the earliest Christians were playing their antipatriarchal ideas against Rome, not only in a passive sense (none of this matters because God is going to bring the eschaton soon anyway), but also in an active sense (Augustus is not the father [pater patriae]; Yahweh is).

But here is where I might disagree slightly. I think the early Christians were interested in the long term, but they thought that the return of the messiah was going to intervene (IOW, the long term for them was the new heavens and new earth promised by Isaiah, just as the long term for Roman propaganda was the age of Saturn or the golden age). I think they thought of themselves as already living in the way they were going to be living once Jesus returned.

Ben.

andrewcriddle

Hi Ben

If you mean that early Christians exalted celibacy partly as an anticipation of the kingdom in which there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage then I fully agree.

What I'm dubious about is whether or not they had non-celibate alternatives to the patriarchal household, in the sense that in the Ancient World, Sparta, Plato's Republic and the Carpocratians are (arguably) alternatives to the traditional family, and in the modern world the kibbutz for example is an alternative to the traditional family.

What I'm also doubtful about is how far Christian questioning of the traditional family was overtly linked to opposition to Imperial ideology. Among later Christian writers Lactantius for example is strongly hostile to Imperial ideology but also strongly patriarchal.

Andrew Criddle

gentleexit

I agree, it's a stretch to make early Christianity celibacy a reaction against Augustus' desire to have upper class Romans breed.

What small cult was a proponent of big happy families? Men of God like Plotinus or Porphyry etc. were hardly family men in a traditional sense. Although, it's funny how so many were portrayed as beloved by children and caring for widows etc. when they took a moment from the skies. You have Iamblichus and Plotinus and way back to Pythagoras, all loved by the kiddies. Reminds me of the "Jesus playing baseball" statuettes sold on some Christian sites.

I don't even think that's true. He went on and on about the ill-ends of Church persecutors and portrayed traditional religion as trivial but he also laid the ground work for the ideology of the "God-ordained" empire. He was (as Jerome said) a better attacker than proponent but the attacks weren't against empire per se. They were against the gods and individual emperors.

Christians probably got family values when they stopped being a selective cult and started being a nation (ala Eusebius' Church History story).

andrewcriddle

I meant things like Lactantius' strong pacifism See Love Your Enemies

Andrew Criddle

gentleexit

I see there's only one comment there and it's me. It's funny how you catch up with yourself!

I think his words of tolerance and pacifism (though his vituperative language towards tradition is far from tolerant) are understandable. His is a small and much maligned sect, that overtly separates itself from "civilization". Once the sect rises, that language falls off. Ambrose's sentiments become the norm. Prudentius' poetry carries the message.

Perhaps "imperial" and "family-values" are two sides of one new shiny coin, the one that superseded a grubby old copper that sported "pacifist" and "celibate".

vid

Tertullian:Ad Uxorem contains nice discussion on virginity, christian marriage, etc.

http://www.tertullian.org/anf/anf04/anf04-12.htm