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፠ GUIDELINES FOR AN ORTHODOX MARRIAGE ፠
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(St John Chrysostom’s commentaries on man-woman relations, marriage and
conjugal abuse)
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| 6.
Implications for the present |
Chrysostom’s homilies leave no doubt that men and
women are spiritual equals and that marriage was intended to be a bond of
sacrificial love. However, as it was mentioned, the degree to which these
Orthodox teachings regarding have been understood by the Orthodox believers has
been impeded by a host of historical, ecclesiastical, sociocultural and
individual factors. Chrysostom’s explications of apostolic teachings could help
to alleviate some of these distoritions of the faith and other socio-cultural
pernicious attitudes, provided that they are explained with caution.[1]
Within the Orthodox
phronema, as highlighted in
Chrysostom’s homilies, male and female are understood to have been fashioned
alike and with equal honour and to have been originally one, a union that is
re-achieved in the Orthodox marriage. While Chrysostom suggested that a certain
order in authority needed to be respected so as to preserve the harmony in the
couple, his emphasis on the husband serving as the head and the wife as the body
was motivated by his concern to underscore their mutual dependence and to deter
them from mistreating and alienating each other. Such pronouncements could be
deployed to obliterate misperceptions of divinely-instituted husband superiority
and to enforce wives’ dignity. They can also become a counter-discourse to rigid
gender-segregated arrangements of married life that place disproportionate
burden on women, since they evidence that a husband and wife are one
soma and should share the burdens of their life together.
Furthermore, Chrysostom clearly condemned husbands
using any type of forceful and demeaning behaviour with their wives. As he aptly
put it, if the husband hates his own body, he will perish with it. He
advised that husbands earn their wives’ reverence by giving them steady, kind
and considerate love to achieve a harmonious and mutually gratifying
relationship. Such messages could help to counter some male abusiveness by
cultivating Orthodox masculinities that emphasise spiritual leadership and
altruistic giving. On the other hand, his discussion of sex in marriage, which
emphasised mutual consent, dignity and modesty, could help to discourage
practices such as sexual coerciveness in the bedroom (including marital rape),
excessive sexual demands by husbands, or other perverse acts (including the use
of pornography), all of which can further impair the dignity and wellbeing of
the wife and the quality of the conjugal relationship.
Finally, Chrysostom’s pragmatism regarding the
difficulties of marriage and his nuanced counsels that simultaneously taught
patience in marriage but allowed separation in cases of conjugal enmity could
help women living with harmful husbands to realise that showing forbearance for
the sake of preserving the family might become unjustifiable where their or
their children’s (and even their husbands’) spiritual progress is hindered. This
may be an especially pertinent message for women in Orthodox societies who have
typically prioritised their family or their marriage and have endured pernicious
conjugal situations. Chrysostom’s suggestion for spouses to live separately
could be a pragmatic option for some women, while wives’ departure could provide
husbands with the motivation to reconsider their pernicious practices and to
take concrete measures to alleviate those. This, of course, would need to
consider a host of other practical and material parameters in a given context
hindering women’s departure.
There can be no single
solution in this situation,
not least because this depends
on the women’s own diakrisis, but
Chrysostom’s commentaries help to enlarge the options.
Three caveats need to be mentioned briefly. The
first consideration must be that not all Orthodox are expected to be motivated
by Church teachings, not least due to a different spiritual state. In addition,
these teachings cannot be expected to address more ontogenetic, psychological or
environmental parameters motivating pernicious or abusive behaviours in the
individual, which could require psychological remedies or other measures.[2] Finally, the
communication of such teachings to the laity could be hindered by a limited
understanding among some clergy of the Orthodox marriage, problematic attitudes
about conjugal abuse and unhelpful counselling approaches to spiritual children,
possibilities that would require understanding intimately the conditions of the
clergy in a given context.[3]
[1]
The potential of Chrysostom’s commentaries to change attitudes and
misperceptions has been suggested also in Gassin, “Eastern Orthodox
Christianity,” 2015.
[2]
James Gilligan, Violence: Reflections on
our Deadliest Epidemic (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1999); Donald
Dutton, The Abusive Personality: Violence
and Control in Intimate Relationships (New York: Guilford Publications,
2007); Linda Mills, “Shame and Intimate Abuse: The Critical Missing Link between
Cause and Cure,” Children and Youth
Services Review 30 (2008): 631–63.
[3]
Within the Orthodox tradition, most believers will have a spiritual father to
whom they go for confession. The spiritual father is usually involved in the
life of the couple and may be approached first when problems in the family
arise.
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