f
that virginity was considered a qualification for high religious
functions, so that it seemed meritorious and pure and a nobler estate
than marriage.

+685. Christian asceticism.+ Christianity is ascetic in its attitude
towards wealth, luxury, and pleasure. It inherited from Judaism
hostility to sensuality, which was thought by the Jews to be a mark of
heathenism and an especial concomitant of idolatry. We distinguish
between luxury and pleasure on the one side and sensuality on the other,
and repress the last for rational, not ascetic, reasons.

+686. Three traditions united in Christianity.+ The three streams of
tradition which entered into Christianity brought down ascetic notions
and temper. The antagonism of flesh and spirit is expressed, Galat. v.
16, and the evil of the flesh, Romans vii. 18, 25; Eph. v. 29. Yet
ascetics are denounced, 1 Tim. iv. 3, "forbidding to marry, and
commanding to abstain from meats, which God created to be received with
thanksgiving by them that believe and know the truth." In 1 Tim. iii. 2
and Titus i. 6 it is expressly stated that a priest or bishop is to be
the husband of one wife. In Revelation xiv. 4 a group are described as
"they who were not defiled with women, for they are virgins." The notion
that procreation is "impure" and that renunciation of it is "purity" is
present here. Cf. Levit. xv. 16-18. In 1 Cor. vii the doctrine is that
renunciation of marriage is best; that marriage is a concession to human
frailty; that all sex relation outside of marriage is sin. If there is a
technical definition of sin, virtue, purity, etc., it can only be
satisfied by arbitrary acts which are ascetic in character. The
definitions also produce grades of goodness and merit beyond duty and
right. The "religious" become a technical class, who cultivate holiness
beyond what is required of simple Christians. Saints are heroes of the
same development. In general, the methods of attaining to holiness and
saintliness must be arbitrary and ascetic,--fasting, self-torture,
loathsome acts, excessive ritual, etc.

+687. Asceticism in the early church.+ It has been sufficiently shown
that the Greco-Roman world, at the birth of Christ, was penetrated by
ascetic ideas and streams of ascetic usage. In the postapostolic period
there was a specific class of ecclesiastical ascetics. There were many
different fields of origin for such a class in the different
provinces.[2176] Epictetus (b. 60 A.D.) had a spir