See the next chapter, note 6. Philip the evangelist, according to Acts , had four daughters who were virgins. Clement assuming that he is speaking of the same Philip is the only one to tell us that they afterward married, and he tells us nothing about their husbands. Polycrates in the next chapter states that two of them at least remained virgins. If so, Clement's statement can apply at most only to the other two.
Whether his report is correct as respects them we cannot tell. The words of Philip. Clement is the only Father who reports that Paul was married; many of them expressly deny it; e. In the early Church, it was known that the Apostles were married In the early Church, it was known that the Apostles were married. Log in. Footer FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
One group he was particularly concerned to refute were the Encratites, a sect that insisted that all true followers of Christ must renounce sexual expression. Clement responded by holding up the married Apostles as examples of authentic Christianity. Consider, Clement said, the marriage of St.
Like Philip, St. Peter experienced the joys of child-rearing in his marriage. Reporting a legend found nowhere else in the Christian sources, Clement told the story of the martyrdom of Peter's wife. She was arrested and led away with Peter helplessly looking on.
This sturdy old couple did not weep, however, or bewail their fate, but encouraged one another, knowing the end was near. To be sure, Clement was not free of the sexual asceticism that came to shape and color Christianity. But his vision of marriage remained a positive one and it was grounded on the pattern he understood the Apostles themselves to have laid down.
Christians even assigned a feminine traveling companion to St. This was St. Thecla, holy Thecla, a chaste young virgin from a wealthy family in Iconium, in modern-day Turkey, who heard Paul preach on his sojourn there.
Smitten with Paul's message, she converted to Christianity over her parents' objections and became his disciple. She traveled with Paul for a while, but also branched off on her own, encountering in her life of missionary zeal a whole variety of threats and challenges.
She tamed wild beasts in the arena, she staved off the advances of men who threatened her virginity, and she even converted the pagan Queen of Thrace. The Acts of Paul and Thecla, which contain these fabulous tales, do not depict her as married to Paul in any conventional sense of that word, but she surely can be seen as the feminine side of that peripatetic Apostle to the Gentiles.
And she was venerated by the Church as such. Indeed, quite possibly no early Christian woman enjoyed wider veneration. She was reverently depicted in early Christian art, invoked as a guardian on Christian tombstones, and celebrated for her virtues by Christian orators like St. John Chrysostom. That paragon of austere Latin orthodoxy, St. Ambrose, preached about St. Thecla and governed Milan from the Cathedral of Holy Thecla.
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Paster Phil Stephen Welcome, how do you address that the word for "Woman"and the Word for "wife" is the exact same word? Also, how do you address the word "Adelphen" or "sister" in the discription of the Woman? Why are the Names of the Apostles Spouses never mentioned when the names of other spouse are, "the wife of Clopus" for example. I suggest to you that the english translation, as they often do, removes from the translation the actual heart of the Gospel.
Which is that the apostles, after thier ministry with Christ,were fully dedicated to that ministry, and not to an earthly Spouse. John B. Pachol John B. Pachol 51 1 1 silver badge 1 1 bronze badge. Welcome to the site! This next has nothing to do with the quality of your answer, it's just standard to help new visitors avoid misunderstanding the site as I did at first.
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