ABSTRACT
Mainstream Christianity places the defence of marriage and the household at the centre of Christian identity. It is therefore noteworthy that in the first two centuries of Christianity marriage was attacked from a variety of standpoints as incompatible with full Christian commitment. The best documented attack came from the Encratite movement, which held that all Christians are called to a life of sexual abstinence. It first surfaces in the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, where Paul defends the right to marriage but treats his opponents with notable respect. It can be argued that Encratism follows from the Pauline Gospel, and that Paul, in refusing to follow the logic of position to this conclusion, was guilty of inconsistency and timidity. Marriage was also attacked by those who wished to replace marriage with sexual communism. Epiphanes, On Righteousness, attacks marriage as part of a system of exclusive property rights that contradicts the original will of the Creator. Epiphanes was much indebted to the Cynic movement, as Encratism was also. Both Encratism and so-called ‘libertinism’ shared the same rejection of the narrow interests of the traditional family, and dreamt of a recovery of Paradise. Whether this recovery was attained by renouncing sex or by liberating it can be seen as a secondary question, where opposite views could be held in the context of the same radical interpretation of the Gospel, an interpretation that deserves serious attention even today.
