The Freedom of the Martyr and the Virgin

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Free will in sexual interactions implies individuals have the power to control desires, yet it also grants agency to resist unwanted advances. This duality of free will plays a role in enforcing sexual restrictions and promoting consent. The concept extends beyond personal desires to resisting societal pressures and cultural norms. It highlights the freedom to choose resistance over succumbing to biological urges, as seen in the examples of martyrs and virgins in history.

Nearly a millennium before the swinging ’60s, a revolution in attitudes toward sex and sexuality transformed how we consider marriage, family, the sexes, equality, consent, and even concepts like free will and human dignity.

In this episode of Post-Christianity?, Andrew Wilson and Glen Scrivener interview Kyle Harper, a University of Oklahoma historian of the classical and author of From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity. Harper unpacks that first revolution, how it shaped the traditional Western understanding of sex, and how it has been challenged and in some ways rejected in the past 60 years.

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Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.

The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.