Andreas Wollbold's monumental work on celibacy

This year, after 15 years of research (p. 97), the Munich pastoral theologian Prof. Dr Andreas Wollbold published a truly monumental work on early church celibacy with the Friedrich Pustet publishing house.

On 1035 pages, it is a collection of ‘key texts’ from the beginnings up to the 5th century. It was thought that everything and anything had already been written about early church celibacy, but Wollbold has proved everyone wrong. It only remains to admit without hesitation that this presentation of 461 texts (in the original and in German translation) represents an ideal, also didactically clever starting point for any further treatment of the subject due to the extremely knowledgeable and intelligent discussion of each text in the ‘discussion’ mode.

Wollbold's fundamentally benevolent approach to celibacy in no way excludes critical questions and doubts; on the contrary, they are always part of the discussion. No topic is left out, for example: Children, false abstinence, Is marital abstinence conceivable?, widowhood, selection criteria for candidates for ordination, freedom, prayer, disciplinary offences, cult purity, belief in demons, dangers, obstacles to ordination, removal of a bishop from office, etc. - Topics from the life of the early church, which is just as exposed to happiness and failure as it is today.

Each section ends with a ‘yield’ (not ‘result’!), which helps to keep track of the wealth of topics.

Wollbold is so proficient in Greek and Latin that he draws everything directly from the sources. The presentation of the texts in two columns - in the original language and in German - maximises the possibility of checking his statements.

The summary of the history of research (pp. 55-70) is also very successful, as is the original ‘Outlook on further historical celibacy research’ (pp. 92-97), a kind of prognosis of how celibacy can be studied in the future under the sign of evolutionary psychology, social history and sociology.

The secondary literature consulted by Wollbold alone comprises 33 pages. The immense amount of work, also on the part of the publisher, is well worth the 88 euros.

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Category: Recommended reading