Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 22:4 (Winter 2018)
Article: Celibacy As Discipleship Or Vocation? A Protestant Reading Of Gregory Of Nyssa And Thomas Aquinas
Author: Chris H. Smith, Jr.

SBJT 22:4 (Winter 2018) p. 101

Celibacy As Discipleship Or Vocation? A Protestant Reading Of Gregory Of Nyssa And Thomas Aquinas

Chris H. Smith, Jr.

Chris H. Smith, Jr. is the Assistant Director of Student Life at Boyce College where he has adjunct taught systematic theology. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Systematic Theology from Wheaton College, having completed his MDiv at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Chris contributed to Karen Jobes’s Discovering the Septuagint: A Guided Reader (Kregel, 2016). He is an elder-in-training at Kenwood Baptist Church at Victory Memorial, the husband of Holly, and the father of two young boys—Frederick and Simon.

For a variety of reasons, American Protestants are being forced to reconsider historic teachings and practices of celibacy.1 This article is but a small part of the larger project of clarifying the place of celibacy and singleness in Protestant systematic and pastoral theology.2 Specifically, this article attempts to determine to what extent celibacy should be understood as a matter of discipleship and to what extent it is a matter of vocation. The term “discipleship” is used here to mean the common standard against which all Christians are judged while the term “vocation” is used here to mean a specific calling only given to some disciples. Placing celibacy in these categories will, hopefully, bring clarity to Protestant discussions of the issue and avoid some of the confusion caused by similar discussions surrounding wealth and poverty in recent years.3 In an attempt to think through these distinctions, this article will first outline the proposals of two theologians who had a high valuation of celibacy—Gregory of Nyssa and Thomas Aquinas. The article will then conclude

SBJT 22:4 (Winter 2018) p. 102

with a distinctly Protestant proposal which draws on helpful insights from both Nyssen and Thomas while also critiquing their formulations.

Gregory Of Nyssa

Of the early theologians who wrote on the issue of virginity perhaps none have attracted more attention in recent years than Gregory of Nyssa.4 Nyssen’s praise of virginity began where his literary career began, with his treatise De virginitate.5 In the treatise, Nyssen praises virginity as the state of life that best enables one to already begin realizing humanity’s telos—“to participate more deeply in the being of God” through divine contemplation.