The Sacrament of the Bridal Chamber: What Was It?

French Orthodox theologian Jean-Yves Leloup has a different interpretation of the Sacrament of the Bridal Chamber. In his recent translation of the Gospel of Philip,4 he compares the Sacrament to aspects of Jewish mysticism, developed many centuries later in the Kabbala, which touch on how to conceive superior children.

As Leloup points out, the Gospel of Philip envisions a "sacred embrace," which is a sexual union based not on lust, but rather upon the spiritual blending of man and woman. He then distinguishes between mere procreation and "creative engendering," in which the sacred embrace of a couple calls down a spark of divinity to conceive a physical child, but with enhanced spiritual potential. Without this sacrament of holy union, Leloup says, children may be well born, yet poorly conceived. The holiest goal is immaculate conceptions, with pure intentions (i.e., giving freely, an expression of creative generosity, a child desired for itself).5

Yet other observers, Cambridge scholar Mary Sharpe6 among them, agree that the Sacrament of the Bridal Chamber calls for the sexual union of mates, but not for the purpose of producing physical offspring. The Gnostic gospels teach that physical offspring were associated with mankind's fall from grace in the first place. The Gospel of Philip says: