From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (Revealing Antiquity Book 20)

Foucault, Langlands, Williams, Verstraete and Provencal, along with an army of others, have spilt gallons of ink to chronicle and choreograph the tricky and intricate sexual mores of ancient Rome into the Christian era. Kyle Harper, Professor of Classics and Letters at the University of Oklahoma and Executive Director of the Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage, has added his voice to the discordant chorus in his 316 page hardback, “From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity.” It is a work written for both the lettered and the thoughtful learner alike. The author is clinical in his approach, analytical in his reading, and fairly impartial in his objective.“From Shame to Sin” seeks to track the change in Roman sexuality over a roughly 600 year period as Roman society met, and became absorbed into, Christianity. Harper does this by “exploring the late classical world out of which Christianity emerged and following the story of the religion’s expansion down to the age of the emperor Justinian” (preface). Since the author is a classicist, it is no surprise that he accomplishes his task by following romantic novels of the high imperial roman society to the late antiquity of Christian Hagiographa. It provides not only an interesting excursion into the romantic genre of the period, but also a contextual glance into the rules of virtue and shame prevalent at the time. As the author observes, “The Christian transformation of sex can be retraced in the history of literature, which mirrors quite sensitively the passage from a public sexual ideology organized around the imperatives of social reproduction to a mentality founded in ecclesiastical norms. In short, the history of literature recapitulates the passage from shame to sin” (16). He follows this transition through the second century work of Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe and Clitophon to the seventh century composition of John Moschus’s The Spiritual Meadow.Harper takes the reader by the hand and weaves them across the erotic ethics of Rome, showing how the surplus of slave bodies provided a venue for plentiful outlets to gratify the male libido. The author also chronicles the placement of homoeroticism, whether pederasty, consenting adults, prostitutes and kinaidos, etc., that was widely permitted for the freeman to engage in with both slaves and non-slaves; and how same-sex marriage, which was not unknown, “had no legal standing or consequence in public law” (36). He similarly recounts how the moral code for honorable women was pudicitia (modesty), to possess sexual honor. In the end, the author’s recitation shows how “the symphony of sexual values, in all its various movements and complex harmonies, was set to the rhythms of the material world: early marriages for women, jealous guarding of honorable female sexuality, an expansive slave system, late marriage for men, and basically relaxed attitudes toward male sexual potential, so long as it was consonant with masculine protocols and social hierarchies” (78).“From Shame to Sin” then tackles some New Testament passages as well as the writings of Clement, and Tertullian, that address sexual behaviors showing how “the novelty of Christian language mirrored the transformative logic of a distinctive sexual morality” (98). Though several aspects of Christian sexual morality are addressed, the author capitalizes on homoeroticism, showing how from “Paul onward, Christian sexual ideology collapsed all forms of same-sex contact, whether pederastic or companionate, into one category” (99), and that category was porneia. Fornication went from “being a cipher for sexual sin in general to a sign of all sex beyond the marriage bed, and it came to mark the great divide between Christians and the world. Same-sex love, regardless of age, status, or role, was forbidden without qualification and without remorse” (85). Harper next maps out the direction this new moral code took as Christianity became predominant in late Roman antiquity, with the rigorous laws on the one hand, and the rigid asceticism on the other; “The reign of Justinian marks a terminal point where sin and salvation, rather than shame and reputation, have come to form the dominant axis of public regulation” (158).Since one “proof of moral freedom was the ability of individuals to change” (127), Harper spends much of the final portions of “From Shame to Sin” presenting one area of change that became prominent in the literary works of late Rome. Novelists and story-tellers maintained the format of the earlier romances, but changed the tension-resolving conclusion from legitimate, honorable marriage to absorption of the “gospel of virginity” (212). Another direction taken up by the storywriters was the recounting and glamorizing of penitent prostitutes. “The impresarios of the Christian imagination realized that in the figure of the penitent prostitute they had not only the raw material for a Christian allegory but a plot that could express the brave new world of sexual morality. The lives of the penitent prostitutes were worked into antiromances, inverting the rich fictional tradition to express an entirely new logic of sexual morality, a new relationship between the sexual self and society” (222).“From Shame to Sin” is a scholarly read, looking through the lens of literature, to see the social and sexual conversion of latter Rome. It’s richly informative, rigorous, and reasoned. This would not only make an ideal addition to a University and Seminary library, but it would be a worthy supplement to a pastors’ book collection. Harper does a masterful job unpacking the social and sexual mores of the Roman world at the time of the writing of the New Testament, which deepens our understanding both the pressures warned against and the resistances prescribed in the Christian Scriptures. I highly recommend the book.

First of all, I must disclose that I have a big grudge against Christianity and that the word "abbot" in my signature is meant ironically. So any polemic in this review must be attributed to me, not to Kyle Harper, who is thoroughly objective and academic in this book. My grudge is this: We live in a culture so deeply mired in Puritan muck (think of quicksand) that this fact has become completely invisible to us. It is very difficult to get our heads above this quicksand and to understand how things got this way. First you have to understand the early Christian cult and its psychology of persecution, on both ends of the persecution stick. You have to see just how screwed up was Paul of Tarsus, the professional persecutor who got the cult off the ground. Then you have to learn a little about the early theologians who further developed this Puritan theology, and how screwed up they were. Then you have to understand a little about the emperors Constantine through Justinian and how the Christian cult found itself in control of the imperial machinery and how the cult eagerly used that imperial machinery to beat down the population and beat classical or tribal (Celtic, for example) modes out thinking out of the people, by burning people or putting people to the sword, etc., as necessary. Harper lists the various categories of repression and reindoctrination: law, ritual, preaching, surveillance (spying on your neighbors, confessing to priests), etc. But demonization and repression are only the stick (though it was a big, cruel, imperial stick). There must also be carrots. Harper analyzes some of the early literature that begins the valorization of heterosexual "romantic" unions, but Harper ends his account centuries before this romanticism peaked with the myths and cults of courtly love in the 11th and 12th centuries. Once again, we are so mired in this silly romantic myth that we cannot see above it, nor see that the romantic myth is just the disguised carrot half of Puritanism. What are the first two syllables of the word "romantic," after all? Roman! For centuries in Rome, marriage, according to Harper, was mostly a commercial and contractual matter like real estate (as it is and has been in other societies that do much better by their children than we do, with the wellbeing of our children dependent upon the romantic folly of adults). But it was necessary for Christianity to valorize the one sexual outlet that was permitted to its victims, to create a clear and pretty goal for sexual striving. And here we are today. Nothing has changed. We are all Puritans now, and we don't know it. Even modern theories of sexual economics, from feminism to Foucault, remain mired in, and deluded by, this Puritan muck, and can't see above it. One just might get a glimpse of what a pre-Puritan or non-Puritan world might look like by mixing in some history and anthropology. You'll want to know as much as you can learn about classical Greek attitudes, for example, which were systematically eliminated by Puritan Christians. You'll want to learn what remains to be learned about the Celts of Gaul and Britain, whose views on sexual matters terrified the Christianized Romans (and which required centuries of work up to and including genocide to stamp out). You'll want to look around at some other cultures and their casual, innocent attitudes toward toward matters that people find immensely frightening today. It will become apparent that Christian Puritanism is unique in the history of humanity. Until us, no one ever had to live this way. If we are ever to reclaim our right to live and love according to our natures, then the first step is understanding how we came to be in this Puritan hell that Christians have made for us.

excellent book and delivered in pristine condition

One of the best summaries of the dramatic change that Christianity made to sexual morality in late antiquity available.Kyle shows that before Christianity influenced the Roman world the boundaries of sex were formed not by absolutes (sin) but by social mores (shame).So a married Roman man could have sex with many other people apart from his wife and yet not be guilty of adultery because of the way the boudaries of adultery were defined - socially, not absolutely. So he could have sex with a female slave (because he was socially above her and she was nothing), a male slave (provided he was the active partner - that was the social protocol in homosexual relationships), a prostitute (because she again was a zero and the state allowed prostitutes because they prevented "adultery" - defined in Roman terms solely as sex with a woman already married) and he could have sex with a boy (provided he was younger and, again, provided the man was the active partner). This married man could even have sex with a homosexual adult male provided he was the active partner, again.This Roman man could engage in all of this extra-marital sex without being in the least an adulterer!Along comes the Gospel and especially the writings of the Apostle Paul, and the sexual landscape changes forever. For a start, Paul in Romans focusses on gender as the deterimining factor in the propriety of a sexual act. If the act is same-gender-to-same-gender it is wrong, ipso facto, it is sin. Secondly, if it is with anyone apart from your wife it is wrong. The boundaries of sexual propriety suddenly shrink.Of course the reason the Roman world's boundaries were set so wide was because it was assumed that a man could not control his lusts or confine his sexual appetite to his wife. This is is the axiomatic premise of a pagan culture: self-control is actually impossible, let's not pretend otherwise.There were of course unpleasant aspects of this revolution from SHAME to SIN, caused by that terrible marriage between Christianity and Power. Whenever these two get together the latter totally corrupts the former. And so all sorts of draconian measures were taken against sexual deviants in the name of Christ. This, of course, is never the true Christian way. Jesus told Peter to put away his sword; he taught his disciples that his kingdom was not of this world. The Kingdom of Jesus, unlike other kingdoms, does not advance by the sword.The importance of this book lies in the debate taking place in some parts of the modern "church" - some people are trying to argue that the Bible does not stand against same-sex relationships. This book shows that Christianity has from the very beginning recognised same-sex realtionships not only as sinful, but "same-sex attraction symbolised the estrangement of men and women, at the very level of their inmost desires, from the creator." (p.12).(Note to author: It would be more accurate to say, last sentence above, that to Paul, same-sex sexual "activity", not same-sex "attraction" symbolised.... etc.)I only hope the academic language used doesn't limit the usefulness of this excellent study.

Well researched, well written book, not for the faint hearted nor closed minded. there is a wealth of historical information and interpretation that challenges our assumptions and preconceived notions. Highly recommended.