m the
Spirit of God. This shows that he often lacked self-confidence in regard
to his teachings. He does not seem to hold the ascetic view. In Ephes.
v. 22 the marriage institution is accepted and regulated, with some
mystical notions, which it is impossible to understand. Marriage and
Christ's headship of the church are said to explain each other or to be
parallel, but it is not possible to understand which of them is
represented as simple and obvious, so that it explains the other. The
apostle sometimes seems to lay stress on the vexations and cares of
wedlock. If that is his motive, he announces no principle or religious
rule, but only a consideration of expediency which is not on a high
plane. Tertullian and Jerome (in anticipation of the end of the world)
regarded virginity as an end in itself; that is to say, that they
thought it noble and pious to renounce the function on which the
perpetuation of the species depends. The race (having left out of
account the end of the world) cannot commit suicide, and men and women
cannot willfully antagonize the mores of existence--economic, social,
intellectual, and moral, as well as physical--which are imposed on them
by the fact that the human race consists of two complementary sexes.
Jerome, in his tracts against Jovinianus, wanders around and around the
absurdities of this contradiction. The ascetic side of it became the
cardinal idea of religious virtue in the Middle Ages. "Monkish
asceticism saw woman only in the distorting mirror of desire suppressed
by torture."[1329] "Woman" became a phantasm. She was imaginary. She
appeared base, sensual, and infinitely enchanting, drawing men down to
hell; yet worth it. In truth, there never has been any such creature. In
the replies of Gregory to Augustine (601 A.D.)[1330] arbitrary rules
about marriage and sex are laid down with great elaboration. They are
prurient and obscene. The mediaeval sophistry about the birth of Christ
is the utmost product of human folly in its way. Joseph and Mary were
married, but the marriage was never consummated. Yet it was a true
marriage and Mary became a mother, but Joseph was not the father. Mary
was a virgin, nevertheless. This might all pass, as it does in modern
times, as an old tradition which is not worth discussing, but the
mediaeval people turned it in every possible direction, and were never
tired of drawing new deductions from it. At last, it consists in simply
affirming two contradictory