Was sexual PERVERSION the original sin?

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I’m looking for references from early Christian writings - especially the Fathers - that link the original sin with an abuse of sex. I think Augustine said something about this, and maybe Tertullian as well…but I don’t recall where, or if there were others that suggested similar ideas.

Here is why I am researching the topic:

IF the fruit-tree is a metaphor for the first act of sin…
  1. God gives one positive command to Adam & Eve: “be fruitful and multiply” (i.e., procreative sex)
  2. God gives one negative command: “don’t eat the fruit that gives knowledge of good and evil”
  3. The only to know evil - as distinguished from good - is to knowingly violate God’s law
  4. Therefore, the only way to know sin would have been to violate procreative sex
  5. The only way to violate procreative sex for Adam & Eve would have been a perversion such as onanism or oral / anal sex
Other support for this logic may be found in that:
  1. The euphemistic metaphors of eating fruit under a tree may be evocative of oral sex (some theologians see similar euphemisms describing foreplay in Song of Songs)
  2. After their sin, Adam & Eve display shame focused on their reproductive organs (making cloths)
  3. The Hebrew word employed for “know” in reference to the knowledge of evil is the same word used in reference to sex (i.e. “Adam knew Eve, and she conceived a child”)
  4. Sodomy (if the perversion were anal sex) is one of the very few sins that “cry out to Heaven for vengeance” and sexual sins are generally regarded as particularly severe (c.f. St. Paul, as well as God’s punishment for sexual sins in the Old Testament, etc.)
  5. Concupiscence from original sin seems especially driven toward the perversion of sex
Now obviously original sin’s internal action - the attempt of self-divinization by autonomous individualism - is what motivated the external action, whatever it was, and would have determined corruption from square one. But it would seem reasonable to conclude, from the reasons listed above, that a plausible interpretation of the account of original sin (if one does not interpret the passage as referencing a literal fruit tree) could be sexual perversion.

…which is why I am looking for specific references from the Fathers or any early Christian writing. Does anyone have any references or thoughts for me?
 
Hm, that is interesting…

I would also like to point out there was another tree in the garden: the Tree of Life. So maybe the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil referred to non-procreative sex, while the Tree of Life referred to sex that is open to life? Hm…
 
We don’t know how long they were in the garden before encountering the serpent. I wonder if they had been sex free before the serpent came, and then they discovered sex after eating the fruit. That’s my theory.
 
StrawberryJam said:
We don’t know how long they were in the garden before encountering the serpent. I wonder if they had been sex free before the serpent came, and then they discovered sex after eating the fruit. That’s my theory.
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Most scholars I read (keeping in mind that a lot of them were secular historians at best - I’m a lit major, not a theology major, unfortunately) assumed that Adam and Eve had sex in the garden that was unitive, married love. It’s something seen in “Paradise Lost” as well - the theory being that sex was good and pure and acceptable in Paradise, but after eating the fruit, Milton shows sex as being passionate but without real love attached to it.

I’m leaning in the direction that they probably made love both before and after eating the fruit, simply because they would have obeyed God and been fruitful (besides, they were literally made for each other) and that anything that happened afterward was twisted somehow.

I don’t know if any early Fathers believed that way but, as I said, the Protestant Milton seems to equate types of sex (good married love, bad lustful sex) with before and after the Fall respectively, so perhaps you could look into some of the influences that he studied. They may have been of Catholic origin, whether Milton knew it or not.
 
I’ll take your advice Tabitha. We may never know what happened, no matter how much we try to. But, try we must.
 
Ziggamafu said:
Other support for this logic may be found in that:
  1. The euphemistic metaphors of eating fruit under a tree may be evocative of oral sex
Click to expand...
Revelation 2:7 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.

Revelation 22:2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Here also can see that there will be an eating of fruit from the tree of life in heaven, which I don’t think has anything to do with ‘evocative or oral sex’ (or any kind of sex for that matter) in heaven :eek:

I’ll check a couple ECF d-bases, to see if can find anything from them on your line of thought…which is interesting BTW.
 
I’ve studied Augustine some, and I’m pretty sure he’d say that original sin was disobedience.
 
Aaron_I said:
I’ve studied Augustine some, and I’m pretty sure he’d say that original sin was disobedience.
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Well of course he did. So did Jerome, and both of them had some prime words to say about women didn’t they?😉
 
I always found it interesting that many fathers considered Eve a virgin (particularly Irenaeus), as I had always assumed that Adam and Eve had normal marital relations prior to the fall…Opinion has leaned in both directions throughout Church history it seems.
 
  1. God gives one positive command to Adam & Eve: “be fruitful and multiply” (i.e., procreative sex)
  2. God gives one negative command: “don’t eat the fruit that gives knowledge of good and evil”
  3. The only to know evil - as distinguished from good - is to knowingly violate God’s law
  4. Therefore, the only way to know sin would have been to violate procreative sex
  5. The only way to violate procreative sex for Adam & Eve would have been a perversion such as onanism or oral / anal sex
Click to expand...
Your logic here doesn’t follow - disobeying a negative command is just as much a sin as disobeying a positive command.

Remember most of the Ten Commandments are negatives - ‘thou shalt nots’.

Your line of reasoning is that only breaking a positive commandment is a sin, and that breaking a negative commandment is not a sin. Which is wrong. Your logic would mean that murder, theft and adultery aren’t sins, since those commandments were three commadments are negatives in exactly the same way - commandments where God tells us NOT to do something.
 
The two greatest commandments are positives- Love God, Love neighbor as thyself. These are called the two greatest commandments because if one truly follows them, they can not break the others.
 
Judaism, whose story it originally was, after all, has no concept of ‘original sin’. It’s a ‘rite of passage’ story and analogous to the stories of other religions of the area (the Sumerian story of (goddess) Inanna and the huluppu tree, for example) about the transformation of human awareness - from innocence to complexity, from childhood to adulthood and how our tendencies for good and ‘evil’ (rebellion) are inherent.

One should always be careful of reading too much of one’s preoccupations into it.
 
Oh, my heavens!

This thread is an example of the bad consequences of viewing the Adam and Eve story as historical.

The Adam and Eve story is a Dr.-Seuss-level hypothetical, exhibiting how Mankind (represented by Eve) would handle every single moral decision if grace were not available, thus explaining why a Savior purchasing grace had ro be sent.

Since the grace of the cross proceeded forwards and backwards through time, grace has always been available, and the Adam and Eve stoey is thus fiction.
 
LilyM said:
Your logic here doesn’t follow - disobeying a negative command is just as much a sin as disobeying a positive command.

Remember most of the Ten Commandments are negatives - ‘thou shalt nots’.

Your line of reasoning is that only breaking a positive commandment is a sin, and that breaking a negative commandment is not a sin. Which is wrong. Your logic would mean that murder, theft and adultery aren’t sins, since those commandments were three commadments are negatives in exactly the same way - commandments where God tells us NOT to do something.
Click to expand...
You should read more carefully before you sound so sure in your judgments. First of all, notice that I am not making an assertion, but merely doing some research on a topic of curiosity. Second, you are wrong; I clearly specified that the 2nd command could only apply to violating the first if the fruit-tree was metaphor. If it was literal, then the “thou shalt not” stands on its own and literally applies only to its own content. If the fruit-tree was a metaphor, than the “thou shalt not” applies to breaking the first commandment, as in: “thou shalt be fruitful and multiply; thou shalt not disobey the command to be fruitful and multiply and thus know evil”

In other words, the sexual perversion would have been the outward action of disobedience, motivated be the inward action of pride.
 
Peter_Dawson said:
Oh, my heavens!

This thread is an example of the bad consequences of viewing the Adam and Eve story as historical.

The Adam and Eve story is a Dr.-Seuss-level hypothetical, exhibiting how Mankind (represented by Eve) would handle every single moral decision if grace were not available, thus explaining why a Savior purchasing grace had ro be sent.

Since the grace of the cross proceeded forwards and backwards through time, grace has always been available, and the Adam and Eve stoey is thus fiction.
Click to expand...
Some of us actually have faith in the authority of the Church (crazy, I know). So we actually - get this - believe the dogmas of the Church, among which are included the assertions that there was were two literal first parents, Adam & Eve, and a real serpent and subsequent fall in original sin.
 
Ziggamafu said:
Some of us actually have faith in the authority of the Church (crazy, I know). So we actually - get this - believe the dogmas of the Church, among which are included the assertions that there was were two literal first parents, Adam & Eve, and a real serpent and subsequent fall in original sin.
Click to expand...
Ah, the dogma of the real serpent - could you provide a reference to that?
 
Ziggamafu said:
I’m looking for references from early Christian writings - especially the Fathers - that link the original sin with an abuse of sex. I think Augustine said something about this, and maybe Tertullian as well…but I don’t recall where, or if there were others that suggested similar ideas.

Here is why I am researching the topic:

IF the fruit-tree is a metaphor for the first act of sin…
  1. God gives one positive command to Adam & Eve: “be fruitful and multiply” (i.e., procreative sex)
  2. God gives one negative command: “don’t eat the fruit that gives knowledge of good and evil”
  3. The only to know evil - as distinguished from good - is to knowingly violate God’s law
  4. Therefore, the only way to know sin would have been to violate procreative sex
  5. The only way to violate procreative sex for Adam & Eve would have been a perversion such as onanism or oral / anal sex
Other support for this logic may be found in that:
  1. The euphemistic metaphors of eating fruit under a tree may be evocative of oral sex (some theologians see similar euphemisms describing foreplay in Song of Songs)
  2. After their sin, Adam & Eve display shame focused on their reproductive organs (making cloths)
  3. The Hebrew word employed for “know” in reference to the knowledge of evil is the same word used in reference to sex (i.e. “Adam knew Eve, and she conceived a child”)
  4. Sodomy (if the perversion were anal sex) is one of the very few sins that “cry out to Heaven for vengeance” and sexual sins are generally regarded as particularly severe (c.f. St. Paul, as well as God’s punishment for sexual sins in the Old Testament, etc.)
  5. Concupiscence from original sin seems especially driven toward the perversion of sex
Now obviously original sin’s internal action - the attempt of self-divinization by autonomous individualism - is what motivated the external action, whatever it was, and would have determined corruption from square one. But it would seem reasonable to conclude, from the reasons listed above, that a plausible interpretation of the account of original sin (if one does not interpret the passage as referencing a literal fruit tree) could be sexual perversion.

…which is why I am looking for specific references from the Fathers or any early Christian writing. Does anyone have any references or thoughts for me?
Click to expand...
Interesting hypothesis.
I’m sorry you wasted your time on it, because it is complete bunk.
 
patg said:
Ah, the dogma of the real serpent - could you provide a reference to that?
Click to expand...
“Question III: Whether in particular the literal and historical sense can be called into question, where it is a matter of facts related in the same chapters, which pertain to the foundations of the Christian religion; for example, among others, the creation of all things wrought by God in the beginning of time; the special creation of man; the formation of the first woman from the first man; the oneness of the human race; the original happiness of our first parents in the state of justice, integrity, and immortality; the command given to man by God to prove his obedience; the transgression of the divine command through the devil’s persuasion under the guise of a serpent; the casting of our first parents out of that first state of innocence; and also the promise of a future restorer?–Reply: In the negative.”
(Responses of the Biblical Commission to Some Questions on The Historical Character of the Earlier Chapters of Genesis)

Pope St. Pius X on the above quote from the Biblical Commission in his motu proprio Praestantia Scripturae:

"After long discussions and most conscientious deliberations, certain excellent decisions have been published by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, very useful for the true advancement of Biblical studies and for directing the same by a definite norm. Yet we notice that there are not lacking those who have not received and do not receive such decisions with the obedience which is proper, even though they are approved by the Pontiff.

Therefore, we see that it must be declared and ordered as We do now declare and expressly order, that all are bound by the duty of conscience to submit to the decisions of the Biblical Pontifical Commission, both those which have thus far been published and those which will hereafter be proclaimed, just as to the decrees of the Sacred Congregations which pertain to doctrine and have been approved by the Pontiff; and that all who impugn such decisions as these by word or in writing cannot avoid the charge of disobedience, or on this account be free of grave sin; and this besides the scandal by which they offend, and the other matters for which they can be responsible before God, especially because of other pronouncements in these matters made rashly and erroneously."
 
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