Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, 45 - 2002. Edited by Malcolm Choat and others. Pp. 267 incl. 12 ills+15 black-and-white and one colour plates. Münster: Aschendorff, 2003. EUR79. 3 402 08136 9; 0075 2541

Gacas purpose is to point out disparities between classical thought and Christian ethics; signicantly, her broader aim is to establish a clear understanding of the underlying principles that made many early Christian sexual restrictions take the radically ascetic forms they did ( p. 10). According t...

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Published inThe Journal of ecclesiastical history Vol. 55; no. 4; p. 741
Main Author FREND, W H C
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01.10.2004
Subjects
Christianity
Chrysippus (ca 280-207 BC)
Ethics
Hellenistic
Morality
Philosophers
Philosophy
Religion
Scholars
Writers
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Summary:Gacas purpose is to point out disparities between classical thought and Christian ethics; signicantly, her broader aim is to establish a clear understanding of the underlying principles that made many early Christian sexual restrictions take the radically ascetic forms they did ( p. 10). According to Gaca, sexual desire had been allowed to run wild and ruin the human condition: Remarkably, early Stoics such as Zeno and Chrysippus constructed a rehabilitated notion of eros from their denition of human beings as a communal and mutually friendly animal that armed bisexuality as normal, avoided gender bias, stressed the importance of consensual sex and preached the abolition of incest taboos as well as conventional marriage ( pp. 759). Given that early Stoicism changes and that Christians were the contemporaries of later Stoics whose values were of procreative sex, conventional marriage and sexual restraint, one can argue exactly the opposite of Gaca, that comparison is highly relevant precisely because parallels can be demonstrated.
ISSN:0022-0469
1469-7637