The Self-Made Eunuch, Obviously (?) (Part 2)

Myth-Busting Celibacy - #3 (Revised)

We’re going to launch right into it here. Which means if you haven’t already read the first part of our “eunuchs” sub-series, you’ll want to do that now. Things will make much more sense if you do.

This is another long one (#sorrynotsorry). But there's a great anecdote and a bonus fun fact for those who stick through to the end ;)

The Obvious (?) Reading

3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”10 The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” 11 But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. 12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.” (Matthew 19:3-12 ESV)

OK. Let’s trace the line of logic for the obvious (?) reading:

1.     The Pharisees ask a (trick) question about Jesus’ thinking on reasons for divorce.

2.     The disciples are a bit shocked at how no nonsense Jesus’ answer is. And so they respond with what is usually interpreted as a kind of uneasy joke. “Given all that, Jesus, surely it is easier to remain single instead! <insert awkward chuckle here>”.

3.     Jesus essentially says, “Yes. You are right that it is better to be unmarried. But not everyone can receive this. Only those to whom God has given it are able to take it on board”.

4.     Jesus then confirms the fact that the disciples were onto something (i.e., that it is better for a man not to marry) by giving the example one who has made himself a eunuch (i.e., someone who has chosen not to marry)

5.     However, contrary to the disciples reasoning, Jesus says that the self-made eunuch’s choice is good, not because marriage is too hard (or too hard to get out of!), but because it is for the “sake of the kingdom of heaven”.

6.     Jesus then repeats his reminder that the one who is able to “receive this” saying should receive it. This is interpreted as a call for a select few to the type of lifelong, vocational celibacy we explored in our very first post.

By and large this logic seems reasonable, doesn’t it? 

If this is how the passage is to be obviously read, then yes, it does seem that Jesus says there will be some who actively choose the unmarried life as a result of their commitment to the kingdom of heaven.  And so, it’s easy to see why the self-made eunuch has become a bit of a modern-day poster child for the contemporary construct of “celibacy” (a settled, called, committed and focused “vocation”), as opposed to “singleness” (an unsettled, uncalled, uncommitted and unfocused “situation”)

However, there is a problem with this reading, and here it is. The obvious (?) reading doesn’t capture the entirety of Jesus’ logic in his response to the disciples.

Have you noticed that every single article, post, podcast, book, talk and social media comment which appeals to this passage to support the contemporary notion of celibacy only ever speaks about the last eunuch? He’s the only one that is ever actually mentioned.

But Jesus himself refers to three different eunuchs. Three different “characters” who all do what the disciples suggest (i.e., remain unmarried). But for three different reasons.

A Less Than Obvious Bunch

At this point we probably need to have a bit of a sidebar about eunuchs themselves. Who exactly were these dudes?

In ancient times, eunuchs were typically men who had either been forcibly castrated (normally before puberty) or had been born with some sort of physical impediment which rendered them effectively castrated. This was obviously bad news for them… but not because most of them “missed out on all the fun”. In fact, ancient eunuchs were often rumoured to be rather randy chaps! There are many accounts of them being taken as lovers by men and women alike. No, the bad news for eunuchs wasn’t that sex was necessarily off the table, but that having offspring definitely was. This was a big deal in a world in your biological line was not only how you established your legacy, but how you lived on after death. And for Jews, it was how you knew that you were participating in the Abrahamic covenant. (All of this is why God's promise in Isaiah 56:5 to give eunuchs 'an everlasting name that shall not be cut off' was nothing short of extraordinary!).

However, there was a silver lining to being a eunuch. Because there was no way they could father children of their own, eunuchs were pretty safe guys to have hanging around the women in your household... especially if you really, really needed to ensure your children were actually your children. And so history testifies to a long tradition of eunuchs rising to important and trustworthy positions of authority within significant households, and especially the royal household. Eunuchs served the king. Not only that, they typically served the King (and his family) in the most intimate and private part of his home, the bedchamber. In fact, that is what the greek word (eunoukhos) we translate as eunuch meant—“bedroom guard”.

Within the Roman Empire (the era and place in which Jesus lived), eunuchs were enigmatic characters who were despised for not being “real men”. But they were also individuals who demanded some degree of respect because of the unique access they had to the king. Given their ambivalent position in 1st Century society—and even more so in the Old Testament in which they were considered unclean and cut off from the assembly of God’s people (Dt 23:1)—it might seem rather odd that Jesus just drops them into the conversation here.

However, most commentators who promote this obvious (?) reading don’t find it odd at all. To them, Jesus speaks of the eunuchs for two related reasons:

1. the chosen nature of their situation

2. the lifelong nature of their situation

This is what is seen to make the eunuch a poster-boy for the “celibate”, rather than just the “single”. It’s why any contemporary commentary made on this passage only focuses on the self-made eunuch.

So, let’s do some thinking about both the lifelong and chosen aspects of the self-made eunuch in turn shall we?

Obviously Lifelong?

There is no doubt that the literal eunuch was indeed a eunuch for life.  That was a fundamental aspect of their, errr… situation. So, moving on then? Nothing more to see here? Not quite.

You see, the obvious (?) reading doesn’t just acknowledge that permanence was a reality for eunuchs. It insists that this reality is precisely why Jesus referred to the eunuch. In the words of one proponent:

‘The Church has consistently understood that Jesus most likely used this culturally-loaded word to communicate the permanent nature of kingdom singleness’.

Did you get that? Jesus refers to the eunuchs specifically to legitimate only one type of Christian singleness. This claim necessitates that Jesus wasn’t taking the lifelong state of the eunuchs as read, but that he was intentionally making a distinction between eunuch-like permanent singleness and any other type of singleness.

The problem is that such a distinction is completely anachronistic. I have already written about this at some length in the first post in this series, so won’t go into too much detail again here. But in a nutshell I argued that the ready agency singles have today in deciding whether to commit to lifelong celibacy or remain open to marriage down the track is just that—a situation that belongs to (Western) singles today. In the 1st Century, you generally either married according to your family’s plans, or you rejected that in order to remain unmarried for life (and likely made yourself somewhat unpopular with a whole lot of people in doing so). The unmarried people with the most agency in making decisions about whether and who to marry were typically widows and widowers.

Now what this means is that it is extremely unlikely that a primary reason Jesus spoke of the eunuch was to emphasise their choice to permanent rather than temporary singleness.  It just wasn’t something that the disciples or anyone else around that time (or for another 1900 years or so) was wrestling with or wondering about. The very concept of ‘temporary/seasonal/prolonged singleness’ is a 21st Century phenomenon.

As we seek to grapple with our unique contemporary concerns and questions, we must not draw analogies or super-impose conclusions which are, quite simply, anachronistic.

In summary, while a eunuch was typically someone whose singleness was indeed lifelong, there is simply no contextual or exegetical argument to suggest that this was the specific reason why Jesus chose to reference them in this passage over and above any other metaphor or analogy for the unmarried life.

Obviously Chosen?

So, did he perhaps refer to them because he wanted to emphasis the chosen nature of their situation?

Well maybe. Except here we also run into a problem because, as we saw earlier, there are three different types of eunuchs mentioned in this passage.

Remember, the disciples has just suggested that it would be better for a man to not marry because, gee whiz, marriage is a tough gig.  Jesus responds by pointing them to the example of the one who has chosen to make himself a eunuch for the kingdom… but only after he mentions two other types of eunuchs who did not make any such choice.

Surely there is a reason why he bothered to mention those other eunuchs!? I mean, if the main point of his answer to the disciples was to commend those who had chosen to become eunuchs, then why not just skip the “circumstantial” eunuchs altogether? What purpose do they serve? There has to be a reason he included them right? What is it?

Well, I’m going to offer a suggestion a little later. But for the moment let’s just keep focusing on this paradigm of “choice” vs “circumstance” which the obvious (?) reading insists on. Because, you see, here too is an obvious problem.

In a 2021 article ‘Family Planning for Eunuchs’ (you should read it in full, it is destined to warm the hearts of any single Christian), Greg Coles writes this:

I am, as far as I can tell, precisely the kind of person Jesus has in view when he says in Matthew 19, “There are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.”

 I seem to fit that third category rather well: the people who live a sexless and childless life, not because they have no other options, but because they truly believe that the kingdom of heaven is worth every ounce of their devotion.1

Coles locates himself in the position of the one who has good options (i.e., to marry and have a family), but who has chosen to forgo the good option because of something which is better in his estimation—celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

However, what Coles doesn’t say in this article (not because he is hiding it, but just because it is not the focus of his argument here) he does say elsewhere:

Once you find yourself in the place I’ve found myself—unconvinced by revisionary theology on homosexuality, unable to conjure even the slightest heterosexual desire, unwilling to marry a woman you can’t desire sexually—there’s no reason to keep wondering about marriage.¹

Let me be absolutely clear. I find Gregory Coles’ honesty incredibly honourable and courageous. I also find his desire to live faithfully in light of his understanding of God’s call to godly sexual discipleship incredibly encouraging and challenging. All that notwithstanding, it doesn’t exactly sound like he has exclusively chosen ‘a sexless and childless life’ over what he considers to be other (good and godly) options.

If we are to understand that Coles’ same-sex attraction is not something he has intentionally conjured up in himself (i.e., it is something he likely experiences as the result of a combination of nature and nurture, as seems to be the contemporary scientific consensus), then his “choice” to be celibate as a same-sex attracted Christian is ultimately no more or less intentional than my “choice” to be celibate as an opposite-sex Christian who currently isn’t married and may never be.

Let me put it another way. A key problem with the obvious (?) reading is the way it seeks to very directly align one “type” of eunuch with one “type” of contemporary single person, based on an over-simplified paradigm of “choice” versus “circumstance”. This inevitably positions one “type” of the unmarried life (i.e., chosen lifelong celibacy) as somehow more significant or worth noticing than other “types” (i.e., circumstantial and possibly seasonal singleness). The self-made eunuch stands in the middle of the stage under the full strength of the spotlights, while the other two eunuchs literally fade into the background.

But here’s the thing folks. In a 21st Century Western context a Christian person’s singleness is almost never a strict binary of choice (the self-made eunuch) or circumstance (the accidental eunuch). As I’ve written elsewhere in an article on this very topic:

Despite our best attempts to reduce Christian singleness down to a simple either/or, it almost always involves a complex interaction of circumstantial factors beyond personal control and intentional decisions that are the result of personal choice—and most significantly, personal choice concerning godly obedience. Sometimes circumstances put us in the position of needing to make a choice. Sometimes making a choice leads to certain circumstances. For the single Christian these two things are very rarely unrelated to each other.3

And so here are the two reasons why I remain unconvinced that, in referencing eunuchs, Jesus is intentionally making the point that the only legitimate form of “kingdom singleness” is akin to “self-made, chosen eunuchdom”.

1) This interpretation doesn’t adequately deal with the presence of the other two types of eunuchs in the passage.

2) This interpretation rests on a flawed and over-simplified binary of “choice” vs “circumstance. (It also fails to take into account the role of God’s sovereignty in all of this, something which I speak more about in this article)

An Obvious Solution?

Ok. So where does that all leave us? What is going on in this passage?

Well, if the obvious (?) reading is indeed obvious (and remember, it may not be. More on that in our next post), here’s what I think may be going on.

1. Jesus has shocked both the Pharisees and the disciples with his no-wriggle room answer about divorce and remarriage

2. The disciples suggest that, in light of this, maybe not being married might be a good option

3. Jesus says, “Yep” and then uses the example of the eunuch because they were pretty much the only legitimate, clear-cut, obvious example of any societal group of people who did not marry, especially in a 1st Century Jewish context.

Let’s look at his words again:

11 But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. 12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.” (Matthew 19:3-12 ESV)

Friends, there doesn’t need to be any sort of super-secret, coded, mysterious reason why Jesus’ references the eunuchs here. He is very possibly just pointing his disciples to them as culturally-relevant, socially identifiable people living a proactively directed unmarried life. After all, who else could he point them to as an example instead? (In referring to this culturally suspect group Jesus might have also been engaging in a little of his regular boundary pushing, and perhaps also making a veiled allusion back to the gospel promise of Isaiah 56:5)

In doing this he refers to different “types of eunuchdom”, based on factors to do with choice, compulsion and circumstance. But in the end, all of them are eunuchs. In the end it “has been given” to all of them. There is simply no reason for us to think that the only one which matters to his point is the last of the three.

Ah, you say. But what about “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven”!? Jesus only connects that with the third type of eunuch. True. But does that mean that the first two types of eunuchs whose singleness is not solely the result of a “self-made” choice but is in some way circumstantial—that is, people like Gregory Coles and myself—are any less kingdom oriented in our singleness? Is our singleness any less dignified in God’s sight? Valuable to his people?

In fact, on that note, here is something else to consider.

Remember what we discovered about eunuchs earlier? If there was anything that made these otherwise pitiful people valuable in the eyes of their society it was that they were in the service of very important people, most especially and prominently the King. Regardless of whether they were born with a physical deformity, or whether they were castrated by others, or even if they chose to castrate themselves (!)… regardless of why they were eunuchs, they were nonetheless still all eunuchs. And so they were all equally positioned to serve the king. To live for the sake of the kingdom.

In our hurry to celebrate the self-made eunuchs, are we not missing the fact that there are two other eunuchs (i.e., those who didn’t choose it for themselves) who were also uniquely positioned to serve the King and his kingdom?

A Not So Obvious Anecdote

When a good friend of mine heard that I was writing a series on the eunuchs of Mt 19:1-12, he sent me an email. I wish he had also sent me a warning in the subject line of that email, because it might have spared my computer screen from the spray of water that was ejected from my mouth when I read it. He’s given me his permission to share it with you all. He wrote:

When I had my vasectomy it was done under local anaesthetic. While the surgeon was doing his stuff, I got to share the gospel with him. I like to say “I became a eunuch for the kingdom!”.

I’ll give you a moment to wipe down your computer screens.

Now, obviously he was joking. In fact he introduced the anecdote as ‘a completely inappropriate way of understanding Jesus in Matthew 19’.

And yet, it is also the perfect anecdote to summarise what I’ve been suggesting above. You see, as Christians we are all called to live for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. That’s our “calling” as disciples. Whether we find ourselves single at the age of 43 like me. Whether we decided to remain single at 22. Whether we are a married man lying in day surgery having a vasectomy after having had numerous children. Whatever our circumstances, we are all called to make the choice to live for the king in every aspect of our lives.

Does Jesus suggest in Mt 19:1-12 that some of his disciples will actively “make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” by having the real option to marry and choosing not to? You bet he does! As a result we should eagerly stand alongside those men and women who make such a choice. Brothers and sisters, I honour you. I am deeply encouraged and challenged by you. Please keep helping me live for the sake of the kingdom, just as you do.

But those men and women are not the only “eunuchs” whom Jesus speaks of in Mt 19:1-12. They are not the only unmarried person he points to. They are not the only single Christians who are right here, right now wonderfully positioned to serve the King and his Kingdom.

There is more to the obvious (?) reading than generally meets the eye… or at least more than generally makes it into contemporary articles, talks, podcasts and books on celibacy. Are we willing to embrace that?

Of course, all of this is only relevant if the obvious reading is indeed obvious.  And it may not be. There is a little discussed, but alternative way of understanding and applying this passage. And I reckon it has some merit to it. We’ll dive into that in our next post. Subscribe now so that you don’t miss it.

1. Gregory Coles, Single Gay Christian: A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, 2017), 95.