sees an impurity in sexual relations even when they are legitimated by marriage'' (Crouzel 1989, 138).
20
On the other hand, Clement and others who supported marriage against the Encratites cited the verse "Male and female created He them" as prefiguring the creation of woman and therefore as endorsing marriage (Alexandre 1988, 198). Similarly, somewhat later, John Chrysostom wrote with great enthusiasm of the creation of humanity in two sexes and of sexual desire and intercourse as restoration of the "male and female'' of Genesis and even of the "neither male nor female" of Galatians 3:28 (1986, 43). Many of the formulations of Chrysostom's later writings on sexual desire and marriage are nearly indistinguishable from those of the Rabbis: "From the beginning God has been revealed as the fashioner, by His providence, of this union of man and woman, and He has spoken of the two as one: 'male and female He created them' and 'there is neither male nor female.' There is never such intimacy between a man and a man as there is between husband and wife, if they are united as they ought to be." And perhaps even more movingly, "But suppose there is no child; do they then remain two and not one? No; their intercourse effects the joining of their bodies, and they are made one, just as when perfume is mixed with ointment" (1986, 76).
21
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But even those Fathers who were in this latter category privileged virginity over marriage as the higher state (Jeremy Cohen 1989, 23135, 23738, 24344). Clement was the most friendly of the Fathers toward marriage, but "when he set out his own matrimonial ideal, it amounted to sexless marriage, lived as if between a brother and a sister" (Fox 1987, 359; but see Ford 1989, 21). Also Gregory Nazianzen, in the midst of precisely an encomium to marriage, says "I will join you in wedlock. I will dress the bride. We do not dishonour marriage, because we give a higher honour to virginity" (quoted in Ford 1989, 25). The same John Chrysostom who so warmly and movingly praised desire and the intimacy of husband and wife remained a virgin and highly valued the virgin life over the married state, while the Rabbis disallowed virginity in principle.
22
As
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 | | 20. See also Peter Brown's magnificent chapter on Origen (Brown 1988, 16078).
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| | 21. See also Ford (1989, 4349). See, however, next note.
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| | 22. I am quite convinced by Ford's description of the later John Chrysostom's ideology of sexuality that his mature view was not very different from that of the Rabbis (Ford 1989, 49 and passim), but, once again it is important to note that despite all that, Chrysostom himself was celibate, and as Ford notes, "he continued all his life to consider a life of virginity in dedication to God as an even higher calling" (73).
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