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Summary
- In the Bible and in Christian teaching, a chaste husband is a faithful one, whose eyes, thoughts and body belong to his wife.
- Chastity in marriage does not mean going without sex; the Catechism says married people are called to “conjugal chastity,” and Luther’s catechism asks each to “love and honor his spouse.”
- Paul allows a married couple to abstain only by agreement, for a short time of prayer, and then to “come together again.”
- The Old Testament shows the same pattern of brief, shared abstinence before meeting God, and Orthodox couples still abstain on the eves of the Eucharist and in Lent.
- A married couple may not simply stop for good: Paul’s permission is “for a time,” and one-sided refusal is what he calls “defraud.”
- Christian chastity grows from within as self-mastery and the fruit of the Spirit, so a husband keeps it the way Job did, with “a covenant with mine eyes.”
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture is quoted from the King James Version: Job 31:1 and 31:12; Matthew 5:28; 1 Corinthians 7:3–5 and 13:5; Titus 2:4–5; 1 Peter 3:2; 1 Thessalonians 4:4–5; Exodus 19:11 and 19:15; 1 Samuel 21:4–5; Joel 2:15–16; Galatians 5:22–23; Proverbs 5:18 (BibleGateway, KJV).
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 2337, 2339, 2349 and 2350 (vatican.va) and paragraph 2370 (vatican.va).
- Martin Luther, The Small Catechism, Part I, the Sixth Commandment (BookOfConcord.org).
- The Westminster Larger Catechism (1647), question 138 (Orthodox Presbyterian Church); its place among the OPC’s standards: “Confessional Standards” (opc.org).
- Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in America, “Synodal Affirmations on Marriage, Family, Sexuality, and the Sanctity of Life” (1992) (oca.org).
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