Castration Myths
Volk leftists don't know history
AntiChristian pop-apologists often accuse Christians of cutting off their block and tackle. They typically cite Matthew 19:12 in isolate and insist on a literal interpretation. In context, it obviously means the chaste acceptance of a dead marriage bed, not autocastration:
“The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.”
— OSB, Mathew 19:3-12, Emphasis mine.
Then bring up Origen, who, according to Eusebius (Church History 6.8), castrated himself to ensure his reputation as a respectable tutor of women. Origen later writes in his Commentary on Matthew, that a literal interpretation of Matt. 19:12 is retarded (ComMt 15.1-5). His folly was held against him by cotemperous Christians and expressly forbidden, due to him, at Nicaea in AD 325. It was not doctrinal or common in the 2nd to 3rd century.
Then they mention Justin Martyr, who in the 29th chapter of his apology writes:
And again [we do not expose children] lest some of them, not being picked up, should die and we thus be murderers. But to begin with, we do not marry except in order to bring up children, or else, renouncing marriage, we live in perfect continence. To show you that promiscuous intercourse is not among our mysteries just recently one of us submitted a petition to the Prefect Felix in Alexandria, asking that a physician be allowed to make him a eunuch, for the physicians there said they were not allowed to do this without the permission of the Prefect. When Felix would by no means agree to endorse [the petition], the young man remained single, satisfied with his own conscience and that of his fellow believers.
The exact opposite. When forbidden, the youth did not seek it elsewhere or do it himself. There was no extant or common practice of it by Christians as Justin Martyr would have mentioned it in that context. Castration was not a thing early second century.
Nor was it practiced or mentioned in the first century. When the Council of Jerusalem rejected circumcision and scarification, they implicitly rejected mutilating the body.
As for the OT:
He who is wounded by crushing of testicles or whose penis is cut off, shall not enter into the community of God
— Deuteronomy 23:1
At this point: anathematized gnostic heresies are desperately invoked as canonicaly Christian, then various pagan cults, ending with:
Laugh at the clowns. Then smack them with the pries