1. Christian Reasons for Purity
In the Letter to the Galatians St. Paul writes, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal 5:22-23). The original Greek word that is translated as “self-control” or “dominion over oneself” is enkrateia. It has a very broad range of meanings. One can in fact exercise self-control in eating, in speaking, in restraining anger, etc. Here, however, as almost always in the New Testament, it means self-control in a very specific personal area, the area of sexuality. We can deduce this from the fact that just above when he is listing “the works of the flesh,” the apostle calls porneia, impurity, the thing that is opposed to self-control. (This is the same word from which we get the word “pornography.”)
In modern translations of the Bible, the word porneia has been translated at times as “prostitution,” at times as “sexual immorality,” at times as “fornication” or “adultery,” and at times with other words. The basic idea of the word, however, is that of “selling oneself,” of using one’s own body, and thus of prostituting oneself (pernemi in Greek means, “I sell myself”). Using this a word to indicate virtually all the manifestations of sexual disorder, the Bible says that every sin of impurity is, in a sense, a prostituting of oneself, a selling of oneself.
The words used by St. Paul tell us, then, that there are two opposing attitudes toward one’s body and one’s sexuality. One is a fruit of the Spirit and the other is a work of the flesh; one is a virtue the other is a vice. The first attitude involves maintaining control over oneself and one’s body; the second instead involves selling oneself or using one’s body, that is, using sexuality for one’s own pleasure, for utilitarian goals that are different than those for which it was created. It makes the sexual act a venal act, even if the gain is not always monetary as in the case of true prostitution, and makes selfish pleasure an end in itself.
When we speak of purity and impurity in simple lists of virtue or vice, without examining the matter more deeply, the language of the New Testament does not differ very much from the language of pagan moralists. Pagan moralists also, Stoics and Epicureans, praise self-control, the enkrateia, but only as applied to interior quiet, to impassibility (apatheia) and to self-mastery. Purity is governed, according to them, by the principle of “right reason.”
In reality, however, within these two ancient pagan words, there is now a completely new content that arises, as always, from the kerygma. This is already evident in our passage where sexual dissolution is set in significant opposition to, as its contrary, the idea of “putting on the Lord Jesus Christ.” The early Christians were able to grasp this new content because it was already a topic of specific catechesis in other contexts.
Let us now examine one of these specific teachings on purity to discover its true content and the true Christian reasons for this virtue, which come from Christ’s paschal mystery. It is found in 1 Corinthians 6:12-20. It seems that the Corinthians—–perhaps misinterpreting a statement by the apostle—advanced the principle that “all things are lawful for me” to justify even sins of impurity. The apostle’s response contains an absolutely new motive for purity that derives from the mystery of Christ. It is not permitted, he says, to give oneself to impurity (porneia). It is not permitted to sell oneself or to use oneself just for one’s own pleasure for the simple reason that we no longer belong to ourselves; we are not our own but Christ’s. We cannot decide how to use something that does not belong to us: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? . . . You are not your own” (1 Cor 12:15, 19).
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