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| Diana, the goddess of chastity, yet 'sovereign and free' |
Given the spoilation of social mores as the sexual revolution enveloped the West, Varden observes that "we have lost the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax required to speak intelligibly about chastity, and have thereby lost sight of a crucial dimension of human flourishing".
He continues:
Hearing the word spoken today, we are more likely to think of thwarted sexuality than of dew-besprinkled strength of virtue...
Chastity is the virtue which excludes or moderates the indulgence of the sexual appetite. It is a form of the virtue of temperance, which controls according to right reason the desire for and use of those things which afford the greatest sensual pleasures. (Source)
Chastity involves the unmarried, the married, each having a different manner of exercising that virtue. For the unmarried, that is the single person, abstinence from sexual activity is necessary for personal growth. For married couples, control of each person's impulses is required for the sake of the welfare of the couple.
A virtue, by the way, is a state of excellence in the person. Greek moral thought, which has at its centre the notion of the ideal human life, characterised in terms of eudaimonia or human flourishing, understands the virtues as the building blocks of the edifice that is the human person striving to fulfil their potential.
Richer than mere mortification of the senses
...To tie chastity down to erotic abstinence, to mere mortification of the senses is to make of it potentially a tool to sabotage the flourishing of character.
...It is a matter of overcoming inward fragmentation, to find wholeness, and thereby freedom.
...This kind of purity is reached by passing through the mess, owning it.
This is the register of experience for which Latin authors adopted the terminology of chastity. Lewis and Short, in their Latin Dictionary, explain that the adjective castus in Antiquity was synonymous with integer. The term was generally used ‘in respect to the person himself ’, not so much ‘in respect to others’. Chastity, in other words, was a marker of integrity, of a personality whose parts are assembled in harmonious completeness.
Now, who wouldn’t want a bit more of that for him or herself, or for the societies in which we move?
From the ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and such Romans as Cicero, the concept of a disposition toward a disciplined life, with a goal of excellence and the fulfillment of potential, was readily taken up by Christian thinkers, though the habitus was already well described in the Old Testament.
Varden continues:
Setting out from the aspiration to wholeness — biblically expressed in God’s call to Abraham: ‘Walk before me and be entire’ (hyeh tamim, Genesis 17.1) — I attempt to evidence the dynamics of ‘chastity’ in relational and sexual life, discourse about which has formed the term’s main habitat since the Middle Ages. I consider the challenge of maturing to chastity through the prism of multiple tensions. Few find their way to integrity without a sense of being pulled in different directions. The experience may recur at different times of life in different ways. There can be joy in it. There can also be a sense of agonising conflict.
How do we deal with the fact of being at once matter and spirit, two experiential dimensions requiring different kinds of nourishment and direction? How do we position ourselves within the complementarity of male and female? Can a possibly unified path be found between the yearning to be free and the call to ascesis, that is, the conscious education of our passionate lives?
Given the odium and derision surrounding chastity—and its complement, modesty—efforts to reinstate what is a deeply embedded human experience, both personally and socially, will be difficult. Varden proposes certain steps:
We need pondered, careful, prayerful thought rooted in the Word of God, which alone can explain ourselves to ourselves.
A longing for the life-giving Logos is implicit in much contemporary sexual confusion, even when it finds expression in terms that seem to have gone off the rails. In a post-secular world, the claims of the soul are as evident as ever they were, for being often expressed negatively, a function of pain, and bodily. Moderns are loath to speak of God, yet readily admit to feeling trapped in creaturely limitation. While giving no explicit credence to doctrines of the afterlife, they are consumed with a yearning for more. While determined to assume their incarnate humanity, they vaguely know that our body points beyond itself, since every apparent satisfaction is but achingly provisional.
As Christians we have words today’s men and women need to understand themselves at this level. We have no right not to share them.
Engagement with passions that injure us
More will be provided on that topic later but Varden offers rich pickings in several directions and further clarification as to how chastity fits into the human puzzle is of some urgency as the West increasingly bears the weight of "a two-dimensional account of life and love".
He states that as a young man "it did not occur to me to see chastity as possessing an intrinsic [and] life-giving attraction". He had not learnt of Cicero's depiction of Diana, the goddess of chastity, as "light-bearing", "roaming everywhere", "sovereign and free".
He also found Aristotle talking of the process of "purification" leading to an"equilibrium regained by means of engagement with passions which run wild, to bring these back like rebellious horses under reason's sway".
And that's the crux of the matter—the person under the control of reason. Varden puts it this way:
[Chastity is a] term that, at heart, signifies the conscious education of the sexual drive as physical passion, as capacity for tenderness, as the will to live fully, envisaging the gradual attuning of the body, mind and soul.
[It is not] the suppression or oppression of sex, but its maturing, with a view to flourishing and fruitfulness.
Chastity stands for equilibrium. It stands, too, for fearlessness as we find our homecoming to ourselves, which is what chastity amounts to, is not so much an anxious manoeuvring between [...] menaces about us, as the progressive integration of possibilities within.
We are in conflict with ourselves to the extent "Paul bravely confessed to the Romans 'I do not understand my own actions' (Rm 7:15)". We need a lot of markers to resolve the puzzle we encounter within, regarding the affections, the animal impulses, the attractions inspired by cultural standards. However, we need to remember, as Varden writes:
The essence of becoming chaste is not a putting-to-death of our nature, but its orientation, enacted through integral reconciliation, toward fulness of life.
Called to reveal the wealth of our patrimony
Therefore, those who have the welfare of society at heart, both its older generations as well as its young, have a clear commission. Varden explains:
Given the amnesia to which the West has succumbed regarding its Christian patrimony, a chasm extends between ‘secular’ society and the Church’s shore. When attempts are made to holler across, we risk misunderstanding: even when the same words are used on either side, they may have acquired different meanings. Bridges are needed to enable encounter. Christians must present their faith integrally, without temporising compromise; at the same time, they must express it in ways comprehensible to those ill-informed about formal dogma.
They will often do this most effectively by appealing to universal experience, then trying to read such experience in the light of revelation, weighing their words.
That is how the Fathers preached. That is why their proclamation rings still with such engaging clarity. We must learn to speak likewise, grateful for riches passed down from of old and respectful, at the same time, of our own strange times. No life-giving word was ever uttered with scorn.
The language with which we proclaim the mystery of faith as it touches the depth of our humanity, our flesh, must be balanced and purified, freed of self-righteousness, anger, and fear — that is, it must itself become chaste.
🞷 ERIK VARDEN is a monk and bishop. Norwegian by birth, he was, before entering the Cistercian Mount Saint Bernard Abbey in England, a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. He has published several translations and scholarly monographs and is much in demand as a preacher, spiritual director and lecturer. In 2019 Pope Francis appointed him to the see of Trondheim, Norway. He is the author of The Shattering of Loneliness (2018) and Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion (2022).
Ω See also access to excerpts of Chastity here
Ω Varden discusses this subject here, and here
Ω For Varden's blog, go here
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