{"id":13973,"date":"2026-04-04T13:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T20:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/?p=13973"},"modified":"2026-04-04T15:03:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T22:03:50","slug":"paul-evdokimov-on-the-monastic-and-marital-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2026\/04\/04\/paul-evdokimov-on-the-monastic-and-marital-states\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Evdokimov on the Monastic and Marital States"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A <em>Substack<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/open.substack.com\/pub\/williamfvallicella\/p\/paul-evdokimov-on-the-monastic-and?r=f3tzc&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;showWelcomeOnShare=true\">piece<\/a> wherein I talk about sex and orgasm. Excerpt:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The final sentence of the quotation expresses a profound thought, which I take to be that the renunciation in both the monastic and the marital state can, and ought to be,\u00a0<em>equal<\/em>. But how could that be? The monk and the nun eschew all sexual relations. The married person does not: such persons limit themselves to relations with their spouses. They do not renounce all sexual relations. True. But there is supposed to be chastity in marriage, and therefore chastity in sexual intercourse. Taken in its most austere sense, a sense that neither I nor any of you have ever practiced \u2014 I\u2019ll bet \u2014 that austere chastity forbids all sexual contact between man and woman except that which can lead to procreation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>But not only that<\/em>. It also demands that at the apex of orgasm, one not fully lose oneself in its pleasure, but that even at that peak of immersion in sensuality, one retain the remembrance and love of God, in line with the first of the Great Commandments: &#8220;You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.&#8221; (Matthew 22:37\u201338) And that implies:\u00a0<em>all the time<\/em>, even at the moment of orgasm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Substack piece wherein I talk about sex and orgasm. Excerpt: The final sentence of the quotation expresses a profound thought, which I take to be that the renunciation in both the monastic and the marital state can, and ought to be,\u00a0equal. But how could that be? The monk and the nun eschew all sexual &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2026\/04\/04\/paul-evdokimov-on-the-monastic-and-marital-states\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Paul Evdokimov on the Monastic and Marital States&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,350,358,166],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-doctrine","category-eastern-orthodoxy","category-monks-and-monasticism","category-new-testament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13974,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13973\/revisions\/13974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}