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Children of Adoption
the name of Christian liberty may actually have been part of the oldest
Christian doctrine. At least one biblical scholar suggests that the Corinthians'
incestuous sexual intercourse, which Paul criticizes in 1 Cor.
5 (''such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles,
that one should have his father's wife," 1 Cor. 5: I), "was not a deed
done secretly out of weakness but an ideological act done openly with
the approval of at least an influential sector of the c~mmunity."~~ Such
a sect would have taken Paul's words about freedom from the law-
"All things are lawful for me" (1 Cor. lo: 23)-to indicate freedom
from such rules as Lev. 18 : 8, "The nakedness of thy father's wife shalt
thou not uncover." 84
In the medieval era, the heresy of the free spirit, which spread
among such lay orders as the Beguines and Beghards, came to inform
the Women and Men of Intelligence and the Adamites. One of the
Women of Intelligence, Bloemardinne of Brussels, "wrote much of
the spirit of liberty and impious sexual love, which she called Se-
rap hi^."^^ The Adamites of Bohemia were an anarchist sect that fore-
shadowed Protestantism. (Consider the influence of both the Brethren
and the Adamites on the Bohemian reformer Hus, a precursor to
Luther who was influenced by the English Wy~liffe.)~~ The Brethren
may have understood an identification that helped drive or articulate
the religious reformation: that of the polar opposition between and
the sameness of incest on earth ("sin") and incest in heaven ("grace").
Did not Augustine warn, "Do not think that heresies could have arisen
from a few narrow little souls. Only great men have brought forth
heresies"?
What characterizes a fraternal order such as the Franciscans or the
Clares is its liberty from flesh or its razing the desires of the flesh and
raising them to heaven. What characterizes a libertine order such as
the Brethren of the Free Spirit is its graceful liberty of flesh. ("Now
Libertines are named after the liberty of the flesh, which their doc-
trine seems to allow.")88 But "grace is grace, despite of all controversy,"
says Lucio (1.2.24-25), recalling Rom. 1 1 : 6, "And if by grace, then is
it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace." Although it
might at first seem that between the two kinds of sexual freedom
there is all the difference in the world, religious libertinism and reli-
gious celibacy are significantly linked in some Renaissance literat~re.~'
Moreover, the issues of liberty and libertinism-whether the connec-
tion between them be identity or opposition-resonate with the larger
antinomian and Manichaean debates of the sixteenth century.'" It was
even claimed that the Protestant reformers' doctrine of faith implied