Monogamy
idea · 5 works · 7 mentions · 13 anchored passages
monogamy · one marriage · the monogamic principle · a single marriage · chastity · single marriage · the discipline of monogamy · the manner of marrying · the monogamic relation
in the texts
De Monogamia
The discipline of marrying only once, defended as ancient, Christian, and spiritually mandated
This very thing is demonstrated by us, that the discipline of monogamy is neither new nor foreign, but rather both ancient and proper to Christians, so that you may regard the Paraclete as its restorer rather than its founder.
But if you are not equal to that, he meets you as a monogamist in the spirit, having one Church as his bride, after the figure of Adam and Eve, which the apostle interprets as that great mystery, "in Christ and the Church," befitting the carnal monogamy through the spiritual.
And so they reproach the discipline of monogamy as a heresy, and for no other cause are they more compelled to deny the Paraclete than because they suppose him to be the founder of a new discipline, and indeed of one most harsh to them.
Law in a Free State
The principle of one-spouse marriage, argued to underlie the highest civilisations and to be beneficial for children quite apart from any religious motive, though State efforts to enforce chastity by legislation are questioned.
Monogamy is not the outcome of religious asceticism.
The mutual love which ends with the life, which is strengthened by time and memories and attachment to the children, and which is sanctified by freedom, is the latest and noblest development of the sexual emotion.
All the evidence seems to me to show that, just as all life is an evolution from the simple to the complex -just as our tastes progress from the crude to the more refined–so the monogamic relation is the last, crowning and most elevated sexual condition, to be reached only by passing through the cruder and less perfect condition during adolescence, when experience is on the make.
Stromata
The principle, established from Paul's teaching on the bound wife, that a woman may marry only once while her husband lives.
But the second passage establishes monogamy.
De Exhortatione Castitatis Liber
The practice of marrying only once, argued to be the divinely instituted and universally binding standard for Christians.
And therefore the man of God, Adam, and the woman of God, Eve, having performed one marriage between themselves, sanctioned for men a model from the authority of their origin and the first will of God.
In short, monogamy among the heathen is in such high honour that even for virgins lawfully marrying a matron of one husband is employed as bride-attendant;
Hence, therefore, among us it is more fully and instructively prescribed that those who are chosen into the priestly order ought to be of one marriage.
De ieiunio adversus psychicos
The doctrine restricting Christians to a single marriage, referenced as a previously treated topic.
As to the manner of marrying, we have already published our defence of monogamy.