Augustine being influenced by Origen, it might be better to just title this the Plague
of Origenism, but the outflow is more like this title.
Origen seems to have started okay but he was always seeing a "deeper meaning" to
the Scriptures even as a child and got into wild speculation and allegory. this was
partly true of Clement of Alexandria, who made Origen his successor as head of the
academy at Alexandria. But Origen went way farther, and his semi Gnosticism is
evident in his infamous teaching, continued by some church Fathers, that the prelapsarian
(unfallen) state of the human body was more ethereal and the coats of skins God gave
fallen Adam and Eve was the physical kind of body we are used to. St. Epiphanius in
his Panarion called this "nonsense" and wrote to someone that Origen denigrated human
sexual reproduction. https://www.patristics.co/examining-the-origenist-controversy/
the above referenced article attempts to make Origen out to be more okay than he was,
and notes that the anathemas were added to the decrees of the Ecumenical Council by
Justinian, but people who argue this ignore that no one seems to have objected to this
until sometime later. Considering that the denunciation of the idea of heavenly bodies
being once ethereal till they stopped contemplating God and became physical as we
see them now, is nearly the same as said about Adam and Eve's bodies the two notions
are condemned together.
The idea presented by Augustine and others even now some monastic verbiage. that
without the Fall children would have been produced without sexual intercourse is
absurd on the face of it. The Creed cites the Scriptures not traditions of Church Fathers
(who constantly cite Scripture whether interpreted well or not) for the Resurrection of
Christ, so to the Scriptures we shall go.
What would God expect people to think when they read that He made them male and
female? sexual organs would be the main thing, especially when "be fruitful and multiply"
is added, though this is an empowering fiat not an order to breed but granting the ability,
granting fertility to existing organs. NOWHERE do we see any hint of anything but
the usual mode of reproduction being intended.
I might add that allegorization and non literal reading plays a role in denial of the physical
and permanent Resurrection of Jesus Christ by heretics. This literal fact being established,
efforts to go there were rejected but less important matters were let slide sometimes.
The anathemas were added to the Council decrees oddly lacking the ethereal nature
supposed of Adam and Eve's prelapsarian bodies, perhaps Justinian and others were
intrigued by this, but by the Grace of God a near identical notion WAS condemned. and
the two stand or fall together.
the practice of arranged loveless marriages and the contrast with unstable serial relationships
and flat out friends with benefits and no strings overnight and goodbye hookups being the
apparent only alternatives, conditioned I'm sure some of the negative reaction of church
fathers to sexuality in general. Likewise the Book of Revelation came into question for a
while, because of its misuse by the montanist heretics, and the chilasts twisting the Reign
of Christ on Earth after His Second Coming to be limited to 1,000 years. This limit was
rejected at the First Council of Constantinople which added "of His kingdom there shall
be no end" AFTER the reference to His Second Coming, so His rule on earth is not the
life of the church on earth, that is a foretaste not the rule of Christ after His Second Coming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed#Comparison_between_Creed_of_325_and_Creed_of_381
Augustine reiterates the crazy idea that without the Fall human reproduction would have been
asexual. Ausgustine also, in total contradiction to St. Paul, argues that a woman kept in lawful
marriage for love and erotic pleasure not for reproduction primarily or only, is only a legal
prostitute, his words, but St. Paul says each shouldhave their own spouse to avoid fornication.
Indeed, reproduction is a sideline to sex in the Bible. God designed reproduction in mammals
and most others to be by sex, but it is accomplished (when it is accomplished, many matings
producing no children) by the attraction and interactions leading to sex between a couple of
opposite sex. The human focus is to be the relationship not the reproduction. To say as Roman
Catholicism does that to view sex as anything but reproduction is to view the partner as a tool
of use for one's own purposes, while repro-sex orients to each other and is a giving to each other
is absurd. hypocritical. the most venal and even sometimes violent kinds of sex in marriage
and the nearly or actually forced creations of legal marriages between unattracted strangers, is
precisely motivated by reproduction.
Another example of unbiblical focus is the speculation by some protestant one of those "bible
believers" who don't know the Bible at all well, that the "one flesh" situation created by sex
is the resulting child. What does Paul say in I Corinthians 6:16? that the sex act in and of itself
automatically mechanistically creates this situation, even when with a prostitute and that this
is why the man who fornicates sins against his own flesh.
A heavy dose of Roman Catholic attitudes came into Orthodoxy at varioius times, expecially
from the Russian section when Catherine The Great took Jesuit refugees from the unfounding
of their order in, or rather let them remain undissolves and unimprisoned. This "latin
captivity of the Church" is usually decried in terms of original sin (misdescribed as personal
guilt for Adam's sin instead of inherited corruption, but sometimes denying even that) and
"atonement" (misdescribed as a solely juridic transfer of attribution without an underlying
reality occurring, though this is the Calvinist view somewhat, and heavily weighted towards wrathful God engaging in "divine child abuse"
although Jesus was a grown man when the Crucifixion happened)
but taught by St. John Cassian in explaining why the
6th hour prayers are made and presupposed in several early writers). And in terms of iconography.
The fact is, that this latin captivity is a bit more complicated and subtle. Orthodoxy technically
allows divorce for reasons that add up to a relationship focus and admit Jesus said what He said,
that fornication (which includes adultery and prior sexual activity you get wind of later and
homosexual acts) is grounds for divorce and remarriage without this constituting adultery but RC
pretends He didn't say this and only allows "annulment" on similar grounds as ORthodoxy allows
divorce.
The rejection of oral sex by both, and by Protestantism and civil law influenced by these in the past
centuries is based partly on rejection of pleasure, and partly on the reproductive focus. And a
confusion of this with "sodomy" which it is labeled as sometimes merely because homosexual acts
include these. (anal sex is obviously perverted and it and deep throating oral sex is physically
harmful and has long term damage problems like prolapses etc.) Homosexuality is nowdays
rejected on grounds that it is sterile, along with contraception. So is sex in marriage with a
post menopausal woman or someone who had sterilization procedure but it is argued God can always
work a miracle.
The real problem, that same sex activity shows a serious warping in the persons involved because
their pleasure orientation is abnormal, is ignored. And by this kind of thinking, the transgender
absurdity could be accepted if it was figured out how to implant a workable female reproductive
system in a male or vice versa. Sterilization by vasectomy is called mutilation by some ORthodox
on the basis of the canons against castration which make a man to be not a man but without him becoming functionally a woman. Clearly this is about external appearances, not about invisible
internal operation of some tubing. the effects of castration are far different than of sterilization
by vasectomy.
Sure, sex is reproductive but the approach to it from the get go is to be personal pleasure and
intimacy and sharing of self (which includes one's body, the rejection of body as part of self
shows a subclinial gnostic trend) with one's special life pal, note Genesis 2:18). This relationship
is to come after outgrowing one's parents., the man shall leave his father and mother and cling to
his woman, and as result of this they become one flesh not a growing in the relationship after
sex which can happen, but the sex act itself as the most extreme development of all this. NOT
a marriage of families but of individuals.
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