New Testament

This chapter maintains that two ideologies concerning marriage and sex pervade the New Testament writings. One ideology codifies a narrative that argues against marriage, and perhaps, sexual intercourse, and the other retains the basic cultural values of the upper classes of the Greco-Roman world. These two ideologies are termed “profamily” and “antifamily.” The chapter proceeds in a chronological fashion starting with 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, and Mark. It concludes by examining Matthew, Luke, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Acts of Paul and Thecla.

Early Church

This chapter shows how second- and third-generation Christians wrestled with the familial ideologies codified by the New Testament writers until sexual renunciation became the norm by 300 CE. It begins with an analysis of Tatian’s “encratite” argument, Clement’s emerging ecclesiastical sexual ethics, and Epiphanes’s so-called libertine Christianity. It concludes by demonstrating how all of these ideas coalesce in the writings of John Cassian, whom Foucault deems the quintessence of late antique sexual morality.

Judaism

This chapter establishes that most of the sexual ethics of Second Temple Judaism are similar to the ideological sexual codes of the Roman Empire. It examines works as diverse as Tobit, the writings of Philo and Josephus, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. It contends that the dominant sexual ideology among Second Temple Jews is “Procreationism,” which maintains that sex is for reproduction and not for pleasure. Furthermore, it suggests that most of the Jewish literature of the Second Temple period upholds the same hegemonic ideology of the Augustan marriage legislation, except for the writings of the Essenes.

Augustus and the Roman Empire

This chapter focuses on the ideology of Augustus with respect to his marriage legislation and the illusion it created of a values crisis in ancient Rome. It also examines the writings of Musonius Rufus, Galen, and Achilles Tatius’s novel Leucippe and Clitophon. It concludes that procreation was the reigning ideological state apparatus in the Roman Empire, and that Augustus’s marriage legislation is still affecting our sexual ethics in the modern world.

Then and Now

This chapter unmasks modern forms of power that use Christianity in the service of policing modern society in the United States. It examines certain claims that marriage and procreation can save our world, and it contends that modern American sexual ethics are not “Judeo-Christian.” By analyzing discourses on marriage and sexuality as diverse as those from the Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council, the USCCB, and the Supreme Court, it concludes that modern American sexual ethics—be they secular or Christian—are built on the principles of the Augustan marriage legislation and not on the values of early Christianity. Instead of hailing American values as “Judeo-Christian,” this chapter suggests renaming them “neo-imperial-capitalist.”