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From: amigo2@ihuxq.UUCP (John Hobson)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.women
Subject: Judaism, Christianity and Sex
Message-ID: <483@ihuxq.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 11-Jan-84 14:07:03 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxq.483
Posted: Wed Jan 11 14:07:03 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 12-Jan-84 04:22:42 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 58

A principal reason that the popular image in Christianity of sex
being "bad" has to do with the attitudes of St. Augustine of Hippo.

Augustine (354-430), before he converted to Catholicism, was a
member of a sect called the Manichaeans.  The Manichaeans were a
syncretistic group merging Christianity with Zoroastrianism.  The
particular belief of theirs that is relevant to this discussion is
the that things of the spirit are good, and things of the flesh are
evil.  Also, they believed that the spirit could be liberated from
the material body through ascetic practices.  It obviously follows
from this that sex, even between husbands and wives, is especially
sinful.  They went so far as to ban marriage among members, and
married persons joining the sect were obliged to separate from
their spouses.

Augustine, while he was a member of the Manichaeans, had a long
term affair with a woman (whose name escapes me), which, keeping in
mind his beliefs about sex, understandably gave him deep seated
guilt feelings.  He enjoyed sex too much to give it up, and he
felt guilty about that too.  He says that during that time his
prayer was "Oh Lord, let me repent; but not yet."  Augustine's
mistress gave him a son, whom he named Adeodatus (Latin for "Gift
of God", Theodore means the same in Greek, Nathaniel in Hebrew). 
When Adeodatus died at the age of five, Augustine was heart-broken,
and felt that God was punishing him for his sins (I know what you
are thinking, Maroney, you don't have to say it).

After Augustine's conversion, he never really gave up his attitudes
towards sex, and had some not very nice things to say about it in
some of his letters and sermons that he wrote after he became a
bishop.  Now, I can hear those of you who are not really familiar
with church history saying "So what."  Augustine was probably the
most influential Latin ecclesiastical writer (and the only real
rivals he had on the Greek side are John Chrysostom and Clement of
Alexandria) of the millenium between about 200 and 1200.  He was a
master of Latin prose (his CONFESSIONS, from which I got the
biographical information, is generally considered to be one of the
finest books written in the Latin language, another is his CITY OF
GOD) and his theological opinions have influenced virtually every
Christian theologian since his time.  Thomas Aquinas, the great
13th century Catholic theologian, bases his opinion that every
sexual act, even between married couples, is at least venially
sinful (if anyone wants to know what "venially sinful" means, send
me your question--if there are enough inquiries, I'll post my
response to the net) upon Augustine.

It also didn't help that celibacy was recommended for at least the
Western Christian clergy since well before the time of Augustine,
and made mandatory not too long afterwards and really strongly
enforced in the Catholic church since the time of the reformation. 
I am sure that all of you have had enough exposure to Freud to
guess some of the consequences of that.

				John Hobson
				AT&T Bell Labs
				Naperville, IL
				(312) 979-7293
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