Body: | What did early Christians believe about...?
(Before 400 AD)
Uninspired records of how early Christians worshipped and what doctrine
they believed!
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What Christians believed about deviant sex!
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151 AD Justin Martyr "[W]e have been taught that to expose
newly-born children is the part of wicked men; and this we have been taught
lest we should do anyone harm and lest we should sin against God, first,
because we see that almost all so exposed (not only the girls, but also the
males) are brought up to prostitution. And for this pollution a multitude
of females and hermaphrodites, and those who commit unmentionable
iniquities, are found in every nation. And you receive the hire of these,
and duty and taxes from them, whom you ought to exterminate from your
realm. And any one who uses such persons, besides the godless and infamous
and impure intercourse, may possibly be having intercourse with his own
child, or relative, or brother. And there are some who prostitute even
their own children and wives, and some are openly mutilated for the purpose
of sodomy; and they refer these mysteries to the mother of the gods" (First
Apology 27).
181 AD Theophilus of Antioch "Give studious attention to the
prophetic writings [the Bible] and they will lead you on a clearer path to
escape the eternal punishments and to obtain the eternal good things of
God.. [God] will examine everything and will judge justly, granting
recompense to each according to merit. To those who seek immortality by the
patient exercise of good works, he will give everlasting life, joy, peace,
rest, and all good things.. For the unbelievers and for the contemptuous,
and for those who do not submit to the truth but assent to iniquity, when
they have been involved in adulteries, and fornications, and
homosexualities, and avarice, and in lawless idolatries, there will be
wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish; and in the end, such men as
these will be detained in everlasting fire" (To Autolycus 1:14).
190 AD Clement of Alexandria "All honor to that king of the
Scythians, whoever Anacharsis was, who shot with an arrow one of his
subjects who imitated among the Scythians the mystery of the mother of the
gods . . . condemning him as having become effeminate among the Greeks, and
a teacher of the disease of effeminacy to the rest of the Scythians" ...
[According to Greek myth] Baubo [a female native of Elusis] having received
[the goddess] Demeter hospitably, reached to her a refreshing draught; and
on her refusing it, not having any inclination to drink (for she was very
sad), and Baubo having become annoyed, thinking herself slighted, uncovered
her shame, and exhibited her nudity to the goddess. Demeter is delighted
with the sight--pleased, I repeat, at the spectacle. These are the secret
mysteries of the Athenians; these Orpheus records" ... "It is not, then,
without reason that the poets call him [Hercules] a cruel wretch and a
nefarious scoundrel. It were tedious to recount his adulteries of all
sorts, and debauching of boys. For your gods did not even abstain from
boys, one having loved Hylas, another Hyacinthus, another Pelops, another
Chrysippus, another Ganymede. Let such gods as these be worshipped by your
wives, and let them pray that their husbands be such as these--so
temperate; that, emulating them in the same practices, they may be like the
gods. Such gods let your boys be trained to worship, that they may grow up
to be men with the accursed likeness of fornication on them received from
the gods" (Exhortation to the Greeks 2).
220AD Tertullian "[A]ll other frenzies of the lusts which exceed the
laws of nature, and are impious toward both [human] bodies and the sexes,
we banish, not only from the threshold but also from all shelter of the
Church, for they are not sins so much as monstrosities" (Modesty 4).
250 AD Novatian "[God forbid the Jews to eat certain foods for
symbolic reasons:] For that in fishes the roughness of scales is regarded
as constituting their cleanness; rough, and rugged, and unpolished, and
substantial, and grave manners are approved in men; while those that are
without scales are unclean, because trifling, and fickle, and faithless,
and effeminate manners are disapproved. Moreover, what does the Law mean
when it . . . forbids the swine to be taken for food? It assuredly reproves
a life filthy and dirty, and delighting in the garbage of vice . . . Or
when it forbids the hare? It rebukes men deformed into women" (The Jewish
Foods 3).
253 AD Cyprian of Carthage "[T]urn your looks to the abominations,
not less to be deplored, of another kind of spectacle . . . Men are
emasculated, and all the pride and vigor of their sex is effeminated in the
disgrace of their enervated body; and he is more pleasing there who has
most completely broken down the man into the woman. He grows into praise by
virtue of his crime; and the more he is degraded, the more skillful he is
considered to be. Such a one is looked upon--oh shame!--and looked upon
with pleasure. . . . nor is there wanting authority for the enticing
abomination . . . that Jupiter of theirs [is] not more supreme in dominion
than in vice, inflamed with earthly love in the midst of his own thunders .
. . now breaking forth by the help of birds to violate the purity of boys.
And now put the question: Can he who looks upon such things be
healthy-minded or modest? Men imitate the gods whom they adore, and to such
miserable beings their crimes become their religion" (Letters 1:8).
253 AD Cyprian of Carthage "Oh, if placed on that lofty watch-tower,
you could gaze into the secret places--if you could open the closed doors
of sleeping chambers and recall their dark recesses to the perception of
sight--you would behold things done by immodest persons which no chaste eye
could look upon; you would see what even to see is a crime; you would see
what people embruted with the madness of vice deny that they have done, and
yet hasten to do--men with frenzied lusts rushing upon men, doing things
which afford no gratification even to those who do them" (Letters 1:9).
305 AD Arnobius "[T]he mother of the gods loved [the boy Attis]
exceedingly, because he was of most surpassing beauty; and Acdestis [the
son of Jupiter] who was his companion, as he grew up fondling him, and
bound to him by wicked compliance with his lust . . . Afterwards, under the
influence of wine, he [Attis] admits that he is . . . loved by Acdestis . .
. Then Midas, king of Pessinus, wishing to withdraw the youth from so
disgraceful an intimacy, resolves to give him his own daughter in marriage
. . . Acdestis, bursting with rage because of the boy's being torn from
himself and brought to seek a wife, fills all the guests with frenzied
madness; the Phrygians shriek, panic-stricken at the appearance of the gods
. . . [Attis] too, now filled with furious passion, raving frantically and
tossed about, throws himself down at last, and under a pine tree mutilates
himself, saying, `Take these, Acdestis, for which you have stirred up so
great and terribly perilous commotions'" (Against the Pagans 5:6-7).
319 AD Eusebius of Caesarea "[H]aving forbidden all unlawful
marriage, and all unseemly practice, and the union of women with women and
men with men, he [God] adds: `Do not defile yourselves with any of these
things; for in all these things the nations were defiled, which I will
drive out before you. And the land was polluted, and I have recompensed
[their] iniquity upon it, and the land is grieved with them that dwell upon
it' [Lev. 18:24-25]" (Proof of the Gospel 4:10).
367 AD Basil the Great "He who is guilty of unseemliness with males
will be under discipline for the same time as adulterers" (Letters 217:62).
373 AD Basil the Great "If you [O, monk] are young in either body or
mind, shun the companionship of other young men and avoid them as you would
a flame. For through them the enemy has kindled the desires of many and
then handed them over to eternal fire, hurling them into the vile pit of
the five cities under the pretense of spiritual love.. At meals take a seat
far from other young men. In lying down to sleep let not their clothes be
near yours, but rather have an old man between you. When a young man
converses with you, or sings psalms facing you, answer him with eyes cast
down, lest perhaps by gazing at his face you receive a seed of desire sown
by the enemy and reap sheaves of corruption and ruin. Whether in the house
or in a place where there is no one to see your actions, be not found in
his company under the pretense either of studying the divine oracles or of
any other business whatsoever, however necessary" (The Renunciation of the
World).
390 AD John Chrysostom "[The pagans] were addicted to the love of
boys, and one of their wise men made a law that pederasty . . . should not
be allowed to slaves, as if it was an honorable thing; and they had houses
for this purpose, in which it was openly practiced. And if all that was
done among them was related, it would be seen that they openly outraged
nature, and there was none to restrain them. . . . As for their passion for
boys, whom they called their 'paedica,' it is not fit to be named"
(Homilies on Titus 5).
391 AD John Chrysostom "[Certain men in church] come in gazing about
at the beauty of women; others curious about the blooming youth of boys.
After this, do you not marvel that [lightning] bolts are not launched [from
heaven], and all these things are not plucked up from their foundations?
For worthy both of thunderbolts and hell are the things that are done; but
God, who is long-suffering, and of great mercy, forbears awhile his wrath,
calling you to repentance and amendment" (Homilies on Matthew 3:3).
391 AD John Chrysostom "All of these affections [in Rom. 1:26-27] .
. . were vile, but chiefly the mad lust after males; for the soul is more
the sufferer in sins, and more dishonored than the body in diseases" ...
"[The men] have done an insult to nature itself. And a yet more disgraceful
thing than these is it, when even the women seek after these intercourses,
who ought to have more shame than men" ... "And sundry other books of the
philosophers one may see full of this disease. But we do not therefore say
that the thing was made lawful, but that they who received this law were
pitiable, and objects for many tears. For these are treated in the same way
as women that play the whore. Or rather their plight is more miserable. For
in the case of the one the intercourse, even if lawless, is yet according
to nature; but this is contrary both to law and nature. For even if there
were no hell, and no punishment had been threatened, this would be worse
than any punishment" (Homilies on Romans 4).
400AD Augustine "[T]hose shameful acts against nature, such as were
committed in Sodom, ought everywhere and always to be detested and
punished. If all nations were to do such things, they would be held guilty
of the same crime by the law of God, which has not made men so that they
should use one another in this way" (Confessions 3:8:15).
400 AD The Apostolic Constitutions "[Christians] abhor all unlawful
mixtures, and that which is practiced by some contrary to nature, as wicked
and impious" (Apostolic Constitutions 6:11).
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