Augustine of Hippo and sex

[olegramps]

4. I don't find a radical interpretation. Augustine's words speak for themselves.

The entirety of his philosophy begins and ends with his unique interpretation of the so-called Fall of Mankind. As he stated sexual intercourse, because of pleasurable orgasm is the means by which original sin is transmitted. This is the basis from which he arrives at the ancillary grand pronouncements that the only a few are selected for redemption, the rest condemned to eternal damnation. Infants are deemed to have inherited this guilt, in contradiction to the Hebrew Testament and Jewish theologians, and condemned to eternal damnation in the fires of hell. His morbid interactions were not without opponents who strenuously objected to his distortions. In his grand opus, The City of God, he fantasied how without any pleasure the couples would transmit the semen for the generation and children without the disgraceful experience of an pleasurable orgasm. He regarded the only redeeming feature of sexual relations as the children that are produced and as a result of his identification of sexual intercourse as being defiled, sexual relations after pregnancy were con sided to be tainted with sin of lust. I will agree he, along with Jerome and Ambrose had a significant affect on later Christian's sexual mentality and it took centuries before it was challenged.