Marriage and Procreation were an hotly debated topic among early Christian fathers. What should be the attitude of Christians on procreation, sex and marriage? While I cannot speak for all Christians and for all sects of Christianity out there I will be more concerned with the attitude of those Christians who believed in the same doctrines which I believe in. In this case I am concerned of Valentinianism and the attitude of Valentinian Christians on marriage, procreation and celibacy which is my main concern since I am a Valentinian Christian.
April D DeConick from the Rice University has made a thorough study on this subject and her work The Great Mystery of Marriage. Sex and Conception in Ancient Valentinian Traditions will be the main subject of this post.
April proposes a unique view not supported by reputable scholars in the field by saying that Valentinians neither advocated celibacy nor did they practised promiscuous sexual intercourse but instead they had pure sexual intercourse to bring forth children possessing divine qualities in them or in other words children with a pneumatic spiritual seed in them.
Its true that the positive attitude on marriage and sex by the Valentinian Christians is due to their high emphasis on mythogony. Their eschatology is a consequence of their mythology and their positive attitude on marriage and sex is a consequence of their eschatology. According to them myth was far more real than ordinary reality. Achamoth, also called the Lower Sophia brings forth spiritual fetuses or seeds out of joy after seeing Jesus along with his angels descending to her realm from the above Pleroma. Since these spiritual seeds were conceived without a proper sexual intercourse between Achamoth and Jesus these spiritual seeds were weak and immature and needed a place for them to grow and to become mature. It was then that Jesus ordered Achamoth to bring forth the Demiurge Jehovah so that she can use him as a tool to create earth and human beings. Therefore human beings are nothing but mere carrier bodies for the pneumatic spiritual seeds of Achamoth which she sows every time a child is conceived from a mother's womb.
Earlier I had argued that the Bridal Chamber should be interpreted allegorically as a union between the Holy Father and the individual obviously disturbed by the idea that Valentinians practised carnal sexual intercourse inside earthly Bridal Chambers. The Bridal Chamber in Gospel of Philip should be interpreted allegorically and spiritually. After reading the work of April D DeConick I have to accept that I was wrong and I have to advocate the view that the Valentinians might have had a pure sexual intercourse inside Bridal Chambers just to produce children possessing divine qualities. We cannot be sure because remember Gospel of Philip insists that the marriage in the Bridal Chamber is not fleshy.
However I don't think that marriage and sexual intercourse was so important a thing for Valentinians as April makes it out in her work. The reason being if marriage and procreation were so important to Valentinians then Saint Paul would have obviously stressed more on this point and would have recommended us to strictly marry without fail at least for the sake of bringing forth spiritual children instead Paul advocates the view that it is better to remain as a celibate but if men cannot control then he says it is better to marry rather than to burn with the passion of lust which is completely in contrast with the view espoused by April D DeConick in her work.
Marriage and procreation should be of secondary priority and importance for human beings since it is not mandatory that you should be married to receive redemption instead one should worship only the Holy Father through sacraments and become like the Holy Father which is a view also espoused by the same Gospel of Philip.
It is not possible for anyone to see anything of the things that actually exist unless he becomes like them. This is not the way with man in the world: he sees the sun without being a sun; and he sees the heaven and the earth and all other things, but he is not these things. This is quite in keeping with the truth. But you saw something of that place, and you became those things. You saw the Spirit, you became spirit. You saw Christ, you became Christ. You saw the Father, you shall become Father. So in this place you see everything and do not see yourself, but in that place you do see yourself - and what you see you shall become.
- Gospel of Philip
If time permits then one might concentrate on having sexual intercourse
to produce spiritual children so that as many souls as possible receive the gnosis of the Father and return to the Pleroma as soon so possible but the main goal of human beings should
be to be in search of the unknowable Holy Father through sacraments and
to finally rest with him.
Even the Isha Upanishad advocates that man should live a hundred years without lusting after other men's possessions and without renouncing the works of the Law but one might question what good does it serve when this whole world is full of evil and not from the Father of Truth. If we press hard on the Aryan religion and demand an answer to this question it would go not quite far and they would give an answer like that this world was created for humans and gods so that they can live happily and peacefully here after through give and take i.e. humans should perform Yajna and offer sacrifices to the gods and gods should receive those sacrifices since Yajna is the food for the gods and in turn gods should fulfil the desires of human beings. In this way this world was created for gods and human beings to peacefully coexist and finally to establish the truth of Brahman and live a righteous life accordingly. In this sense the God of the Aryans is a loving god who cares for humanity and wants human beings to live on earth even though it is difficult just for the sake of establishing the truth and saving as many human beings as possible and finally return them to Pleroma. Even though the soteriology of the Aryans is quite similar to the Valentinians the former lack proper mythological explanations for their attitude towards the world and also on the question of how we got here in the first place. The myth of the Valentinians surpasses all religions in correctly communicating to us on questions like how we got here in the first place? Why there is so much evil in this world and why an omnibenevolent and an omnipotent God does not try to stop evil? Why do some people don't believe in any God while others easily believe in the truth? Why do bad things happen for good innocent people? What is the purpose of life? Why does the universe exist? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What should be our attitude? What should be our code of conduct? What should be our role in life? Who should follow the Law and who should not? When does the universe come to an end? We all are truly indebted to Valentinian Christians for their remarkable Depth Psychology on the human condition and behaviour, their insights on the cosmos and their way of creating myths to convey their fascinating ideas even embracing their opponents who think them as unintelligible mad men devoid of any rationality.
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