Manichaeism was a major religion that emerged in the third century. Condemned by the early Church as a heresy, it was founded by the visionary Mani in the Iranian Empire. It thrived between the third and seventh centuries, spreading east to China and west to the Roman Empire.
Manichaeism taught a dualistic cosmology, a primeval struggle between a good, spiritual kingdom of light and an evil, material kingdom of darkness.
This included a dual attitude to sexuality: It was a mighty, powerful drive that first caused the kingdom of darkness to spread; it also could be totally transcended and banished forever from the self.
Two classes existed among the followers of Mani: The Elect totally rejected sexual desire and dietary indulgence, leading ultra-abstemious lives. The majority, the Auditors, were married men and women who idealized the life-style of the Elect and who at least fasted and observed sexual abstinence for fifty days in the year.
Some of these ideals and attitudes existed in early Christian traditions. Eusebius wrote:
Two ways of life were thus given by the Lord to his Church. The one is above nature, and beyond common human living; it admits not marriage, child-bearing, property nor the possession of wealth. . . . Like some celestial beings, these gaze down upon human life, performing the duty of a priesthood to Almighty God for the whole race. . . .
And the more humble, more human way prompts men to join in pure nuptials, and to produce children, to undertake government, to give orders to soldiers fighting for the right; it allows them to have minds for farming, for trade and for the other more secular interests as well as for religion.
Even earlier, similar reflections about a dual aspect to the life of human beings were elaborated by Plato. The distinction between body and soul, between the material and spiritual, between the lower and higher runs all through Greek thought.
Its influence can be seen in the writings of Saint Paul, when he sometimes sounds more like the educated citizen of the empire than the rabbinic scholar.
In any case, by the fourth century there was a strong ideal of extreme asceticism increasingly spreading through the Christian world. Especially in the East, and Egypt in particular, there was a certain “fleeing the world” with the growing popularity of monasticism.
Individuals in the style of the famous Anthony, divesting themselves of the encumbrances and temptations of the city, embraced solitary life in the nearby desert.
For them, the demands of the spirit required harsh treatment of the body—extreme fasting and total sexual abstinence.
Their spiritual prowess became legendary; they were supported and sought out as gurus by the lesser mortals who may have shared their values but who could never imitate their example except occasionally.
As centuries passed, the popularity of desert asceticism waned, monasticism gradually transformed into cloistered religious community life, and religious communities began to be organized to provide charitable and religious services.
But Platonic, Manichaean, monastic, and religious community ideals of sexual renunciation still influence Western culture, popular religiosity, and church discipline.
27 October 2019