Because of Fornication Let Each Man Have His Own Wife (on 1 Cor 7:2)

Contents

Reading pages: 1–4 · 5

1. 1Chrysostom opens his sermon on 1 Cor 7:2 by praising the sweetness of Scripture and warning that shameful words, spoken or heard, feed evil desires and should be choked by silence.
2. 2Chrysostom defends Paul's speaking about marriage, which Christ honoured at Cana, and attacks the immoral songs, dancers and processions of contemporary weddings, urging that the poor be invited instead.
3. 3Chrysostom urges that the poor be fed at weddings, blames demons for wedding ribaldry, and teaches that marriage exists chiefly for chastity, so that a married man's sexual immorality is adultery.
4. 4Chrysostom argues that a married man who has relations with any woman, even a prostitute or slave, commits adultery, since by 1 Cor 7:3–4 his body belongs to his wife, against civil laws that punished only wives.
5. 5Chrysostom describes the misery that a husband's unfaithfulness brings on his wife, warns of hell and of prostitutes' sorcery, contrasts the bitterness of the prostitute with the wife, and ends with 1 Cor 7:2–4.