Jesus said "You have heard the injunction of the Law. ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ I say, ‘You shall not lust.’"
The reference appeared in the 'secret gospel' shared by the Alexandrian Church, the Carpocratians and the Marcionites (assuming that the three groups were separate traditions which I am not sure I really believe). Here are the references again in Clement's Stromata 3 which make reference to this saying:
- If the adulteress and her paramour are both punished with death, it is surely clear that the commandment "You shall not lust for your neighbor’s wife" applies to the gentiles, so that anyone who follows the Law in keeping his hands off his neighbor’s wife and his sister may hear directly from the Lord: "But I say to you, you shall not lust." The addition of the pronoun "I" shows that the application of the commandment is more rigidly binding, and that Carpocrates and Epiphanes are battling against God. [Stromata 3.1,2]
- How can the man who has given himself over to every lust be a citizen according to the Law of God when the Lord has declared, "I say, you shall not lust"? Is a person to take a decision to sin deliberately, and to lay it down as a principle to commit adultery, to waste his substance in high living, and to break up other people’s marriages [as the Carpocratians encouraged], when we actually pity the rest who fall involuntarily into sin? Even if they have arrived in an alien world, if they prove unfaithful in what belongs to another, they will have no hold on the truth.[Stromata 3.33.1 - 3]
- The person of understanding will think out the passage of Scripture that is appropriate to challenge each of the heresies and use it at the apposite moment to refute those who set their dogmas against the commandments. From the very beginning, as I have already said, the Law laid down the injunction "You shall not desire your neighbor’s wife" in anticipation of the Lord’s closely connected dictum in accordance with the New Covenant with the same meaning from his own lips: "You have heard the injunction of the Law. ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ I say, ‘You shall not lust.’" The Law wished males to have responsible sexual relations with their marriage partners, solely for the production of children. [Stromata 3.71.2 - 4]
- At this point, I think that I ought not to leave on one side without comment the fact that the Apostle preaches the same God whether through the Law, the prophets, or the gospel. For in his letter to the Romans he attributes to the Law the words "You shall not lust" which in fact appear in the text of the gospel. He does so in the knowledge that it is one single person who makes his decrees through the Law and the prophets, and is the subject of the gospel’s proclamation. He says, "What shall we say? Is the Law sin? Of course not. But I did not know sin except through the Law. I did not know lust, except that the Law said, ‘You shall not lust.' [Stromata 3.76.1,2]
Now it is apparent from Stromata 3 that the heretics used this saying of Jesus to prove that the Christian God - the Father - wasn't the Creator. After all, the god who gave the Law to Moses actively encouraged 'sexual lust' in order to make the human race 'be fruitful and multiply' (Gen. 1.28). Now Clement can be seen taking apart the heretical argument by misrepresenting their motives. It is now argued that the Carpocratians argument was just a veil to allow the sect to indulge in 'sexual passions' of their own. Yet there is so little evidence for the chain of logic which leads to the Carpocratians being characterized as dissolute sodomists that most scholars accept the slanderous accusations.
I thought it might be useful to cite a parallel argument developed years later by Augustine against the Manichaeans to the same effect. I thought it might be useful to help dispell the claim that there really were Christians rejecting the Law of the Creator in order to participate in orgies. Here is the reference in Augustine:
Now here at once I question thee, thou Manichee, I question thee, answer me. Is the Law evil which says, Thou shalt not lust? Not even any dissipated and licentious man would make me this answer. For even the impure are put to shame, when they are reproved ; and when they are among the chaste, they dare not shew their wantonness. If then thou sayest that the Law is evil, which says, Thou shalt not lust; it is that thou wouldest lust with impunity, thou accusest the Law, because it strikes at your lust. My brethren, if we did not hear the Apostle saying, Is the Law sin? God forbid: but merely quoting the words of the Law, where it is said, Thou shalt not lust: even though he did not praise the Law, yet we ought nevertheless to praise to accuse ourselves [Augustine Sermon CIII]
The language and the citations which Augustine develops here seem to be taken directly from Clement's attack against the Carpocratians in Stromata 3 - even down to the citation of the Letter to the Romans. However the real question that is before us is whether the Manichaeans were really attacking the Law in order to justify their own lusts? No, certainly not. Nor is there any reason to believe that the Carpocratians were doing the same in Clement's day.
Patristic scholars really have to learn to separate (a) what the Church Fathers are saying about heresies from (b) what was really going on in history. The Church Fathers were hardly objective witnesses of the phenomena they were studying. Indeed they were mostly religious partisans actively trying to accuse their rivals of being agents of Satan! When are religious people going to stop being scandalized at the accusation of sexual impropriety among the rivals of the Catholic Church in antiquity? It's all such absolute bullshit. When will they realize that the reports in antiquity that 'Secret Mark' is a 'gay gospel' (cf. the Letter to Theodore) derive from the same propagandist effort?
Probably never, I imagine, so limited is their imagination and critical reasoning abilities ...
