WAS SEX REALLY NECESSARY? We have covered two vital purposes relating to sex in humans- procreation and marriage. But now, in this final installment, we pose the question: Did procreation or marriage really require the creation of sex? Couldn't God have devised some other means of generation than sex? And wouldn't the marriage and family relationship be happier without sex? THE FORMULATORS of early Christian thought would have answered the above two questions in the affirmative. Referring to these founders of traditional teaching, Gibbon says, in chapter XV of his famous book, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: "The chaste severity or the fathers in whatever related to the commerce of the sexes flowed from the same principle – their abhorrence of every enjoyment which might gratify the sensual, and degrade the spiritual nature of man." Their favorite opinion, continues Gibbon, was that if there had been no "fall,'" Adam would have lived forever in a state of virgin purity. Paradise might have been peopled, not by "degrading" sex, but by some harmless mode of vegetation.
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