Chapter Six – Why Is Sex Necessary?

Next Part From Repression to Raw Hedonism

Must the purposes discussed in the previous chapters—marriage and procreation—be accomplished only through sex? Could God have fulfilled His Purpose using other means? Given the widespread misuse of sex, and the suffering that has resulted, would the condition of marriages and families be better without it? Could God have devised a superior method of carrying out His Purpose that would have alleviated so much of what was described in the early chapters?

Important questions!

Sex According to Early “Christian” Tradition

While we have already briefly discussed the Puritan underpinnings of the supposedly most “pure” view of sex, more detail is necessary before continuing.

We learned that many of the early “fathers” of traditional Christianity came to view sex as a “necessary evil.” They believed that it was to be used only for conception, and even this use was considered suspect, and only to be used by those few who were not strong enough to hold to the higher moral ideal of celibacy. (One or two extremely rigid groups even believed that procreation itself is sin. It is no wonder that such a foolish belief caused these to eventually die out.)

Again, their view was heavily influenced by asceticism and Neo-Platonist philosophy, which held that the flesh is an intrinsically evil prison, which contains—and hinders—an inherently good “immortal soul.”

According to this school of thought, physical needs or drives, such as the sex drive, were to be repressed and denied. Any physical pleasure derived from sex was considered sinful and degrading. These founders of Latin Christianity deemed sex an aberrance—a “divine mistake.” While much of the modern world has flipped to the other extreme in thinking—sex any time, with anyone, anywhere, in any fashion, and for any purpose—the underlying thinking, emanating from traditional, orthodox Christianity has remained officially the same as centuries past for the majority of the over 2 billion professing Christians alive today.

Various early theologians, such as Justin and Augustine, witnessed a Roman Empire in moral decline, a civilization in which promiscuity had led to widespread abortion and even infanticide, and where the enslavement of children as prostitutes was common.

Correctly convinced that this trend of sexual license was wrong, but blind to the instruction of Scripture, these leaders taught that freedom was found only in celibacy—the voluntary, complete suppression of sexual desire, and the refusal to marry.

Augustine (A.D. 354-430), bishop of Hippo, North Africa, is considered to have effected perhaps the greatest single influence on the development of Catholic doctrine. Halley’s Bible Handbook states, “More than any other he moulded the doctrines of the church of the Middle Ages” (p. 764). Augustine was instrumental in solidifying and firmly establishing celibacy among the clergy as a mainstay of Catholic teaching. While intensely debated today, perhaps as never before, the Vatican has refused to budge on the primacy of this thinking. The belief is still the same: Sex and marriage for those who serve God in official capacity—priests and nuns—is not and will not be considered acceptable.

Prior to his conversion to traditional Christianity in A.D. 387, Augustine had been sexually licentious, fathering a child out of wedlock and having numerous sexual partners. After his conversion, his feeling of guilt regarding his former behaviour was so great that he felt compelled to abstain from sex or marriage—for life. His warped perceptions led him to conclude that the first sin committed by Adam and Eve was the sex act! (The History of the Church of God, part 16, Kelly). In the year 401, Augustine wrote, “Nothing is so powerful in drawing the spirit of a man downwards as the caresses of a woman” (Soliloquies). Contrast this with the clear instruction from the Proverbs: “Rejoice with the wife of your youth...be you ravished (figuratively intoxicated) always with her love” (Prov. 5:18-19).

In a tragic irony, the Roman church’s Council of Aix-la-Chapelle in A.D. 836 found that abortions and infanticide were commonly occurring in convents to hide the activities of non-celibate clerics (Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy, p. 404, de Rosa).

Ultimate Source of False Teaching

The concept that sex is evil, and that celibacy is the highest order of human existence, is a purely Satanic invention. Scripture plainly proves this, and reveals that this error—this tragically wrong thinking—was foretold to be a problem even for those in God’s Church as the world began to reach the end of the age, or what is referred to here as the “latter times.” Let’s notice: “Now the Spirit speaks expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils [Greek: demons]; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry” (I Tim. 4:1-3).

Celibacy is plainly labelled by God as demonic!

Grasp this central and all-important understanding. Satan, as a sexless, individual—permanently unmarried—being, is not capable of reproduction. He is a fallen angel, and angels are all created, immortal beings not born of any kind of sexual reproduction. Satan has no part in the God-plane, family relationships pictured through marriage, having children and the family unit. Again, the Bible reveals that angels do not marry, and thus cannot have or experience this relationship or the birth of children into it (Matt. 22:30).

The devil is envious of this human privilege, and relentlessly assaults the institution of marriage, and the proper use of sex. His primary weapon is false information—deceit and outright lies (John 8:44). His goal is to create confusion about the roles of male and female, including why God made human beings the way that He did, and why sex, marriage and family would be necessary. In his hostile, deceived thinking, he no longer even has the potential to understand how he could have assisted in the carrying out of God’s Master Plan of reproducing Himself through human beings.

The tactics and strategy that Satan employs in his attacks is variable. For those who historically professed a “form of godliness” (II Tim. 3:5), Satan imposed the guilt-wracked counterfeit “chastity” of Catholicism. However, as times changed, and the domination of this religious system waned to some extent, he changed his approach to appeal to shifting popular opinion. He recognized that, given the opportunity and a different social climate, unbridled human nature would be more than happy to indulge in sex for any purpose. The key would be to make sure that social conditioning would permit this acceptance. We saw that he has done his work very, very well.