Procreation Before The Fall?

[Selah]

[quote name='Lil Red' timestamp='1329967589' post='2391594']
it's beforehand. just fyi. totally changes the meaning of that sentence.
[/quote]

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' timestamp='1329963674' post='2391528']
It's been years since I've read or thought about it, but as I recall, one of my problems with Augustine's pov was that it didn't do justice to the erotic. By that I mean the ecstatic dimension of erotic love, which I think is natural to sex, not a concupiscent by-product. I'd hate to misrepresent Augustine so maybe I'll find the City of God reference I was alluding to above.

ETA: Okay, here is book 14 of City of God from newadvent. Check chapters 21-26, or so.

[url="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120114.htm"]http://www.newadvent...hers/120114.htm[/url]
[/quote]

Okay, I've got to quote an example. Funny stuff. Pre-fall control of ones member justified by anecdotes about people who sing out of their arse. hahaha.

"There are persons who can move their ears, either one at a time, or both together. There are some who, without moving the head, can bring the hair down upon the forehead, and move the whole scalp backwards and forwards at pleasure. Some, by lightly pressing their stomach, bring up an incredible quantity and variety of things they have swallowed, and produce whatever they please, quite whole, as if out of a bag. Some so accurately mimic the voices of birds and beasts and other men, that, unless they are seen, the difference cannot be told. Some have such command of their bowels, that they can break wind continuously at pleasure, so as to produce the effect of singing....Seeing, then, that even in this mortal and miserable life the body serves some men by many remarkable movements and moods beyond the ordinary course of nature, what reason is there for doubting that, before man was involved by his sin in this weak and corruptible condition, his members might have served his will for the propagation of offspring without lust?"

[Lil Red]

ummm wow

[Hubertus]

I think there would have been procreation before the Fall. Has anyone read The Space Trilogy, by CS Lewis? I'm still working on That Hideous Strength, but those books have given me a lot of insight and a much better understanding of what goes down in Genesis. Highly recommended!

[Mark of the Cross]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' timestamp='1330060766' post='2392123']
Okay, I've got to quote an example. Funny stuff. Pre-fall control of ones member justified by anecdotes about people who sing out of their arse. hahaha.

"There are persons who can move their ears, either one at a time, or both together. There are some who, without moving the head, can bring the hair down upon the forehead, and move the whole scalp backwards and forwards at pleasure. Some, by lightly pressing their stomach, bring up an incredible quantity and variety of things they have swallowed, and produce whatever they please, quite whole, as if out of a bag. Some so accurately mimic the voices of birds and beasts and other men, that, unless they are seen, the difference cannot be told. Some have such command of their bowels, that they can break wind continuously at pleasure, so as to produce the effect of singing....Seeing, then, that even in this mortal and miserable life the body serves some men by many remarkable movements and moods beyond the ordinary course of nature, what reason is there for doubting that, before man was involved by his sin in this weak and corruptible condition, his members might have served his will for the propagation of offspring without lust?"
[/quote]
Logically then there would be no contraception, because they could just hold back. But wouldn't that be sinful?

[fides' Jack]

[quote name='Lil Red' timestamp='1329967589' post='2391594']
it's beforehand. just fyi. totally changes the meaning of that sentence.
[/quote]

I saw the same thing - had to read the sentence again.

[fides' Jack]

[quote name='Mark of the Cross' timestamp='1330115580' post='2392421']
Logically then there would be no contraception, because they could just hold back. But wouldn't that be sinful?
[/quote]

Wouldn't what be sinful? Holding back? That's not sinful...

[Mark of the Cross]

[quote name='fides' Jack' timestamp='1330118367' post='2392452']
I saw the same thing - had to read the sentence again.
[/quote]
Hh ha, I got everyones attention, didn't I?

[quote name='fides' Jack' timestamp='1330118522' post='2392454']
Wouldn't what be sinful? Holding back? That's not sinful...
[/quote]
Having sex, but preventing conception is [b]contra[/b] ception! In my weak attempt to be funny I wrote it badly, but that's normal.

[filius_angelorum]

I think people are fundamentally misunderstanding the theology here. Why would we get such a great thing only after the Fall? Well, because sin has made us desire the thing more than the purpose of the thing, which would imply that we attempt to get a bit more of it than we need. Before the fall, procreation did not happen, because it did not need to happen (yet). Perhaps it would have, when God had so desired it and when it served a real purpose. After all, Adam and Eve did not much need the unitive aspect of sex.

The nervousness of the book of Genesis about sex is obvious. What was the first, immediate result of original sin? It was a higher sex drive which ultimatey made them ashamed. This is one point that St. Augustine makes in his exegesis of Genesis, and he knew something about the danger of sexual attraction.

[LadyOfSorrows]

I'd like to return to the original problem...It was pointed out in my classroom that Gregory of Nyssa and some other fathers of the Church believed that procreation would not have been sexual intercourse before the fall. I'm not asking if Adam and Eve participated in intercourse before the fall, but if you think that procreation would have involved sexual intercourse before the fall.

Yeah, I know, I can't believe I'm asking this question. It just seems so absurd to me, but as my professor said, "Well, I'm not going to argue with a Church father."

[Mark of the Cross]

This most likely will make me look the bunny but I'm used to that. But at this point I think I need to ask the question. Adam and Eve were the first humans. Then what procreation are we actually referring too? There was a thread where it was postulated that there may have existed humanoid creatures which enabled procreation after A&E without interbreeding. Are we going into that or is there something more generic that I'm missing?

[url="http://speeches.byu.edu/reader/reader.php?id=6800"]from here[/url] (maybe Protestant)
[quote] 4. [i]Procreation.[/i] Before the fall there was no procreation. I repeat, for thus saith the Holy Word, before the fall there was no procreation. Adam and Eve, in their Edenic state, could not have children, nor, as we shall see, could any form of life when first placed on the newly created paradisiacal earth. [/quote]

[url="http://www.churchinhistory.org/pages/booklets/augustine.htm"]Augustine full article here[/url]

[quote]
[size=4][b]Truth in sexual knowledge[/b][/size]
[size=4]Space does not permit more than a brief reference to a question that occupied St. Augustine (although from quite a different point of view to the one outlined here): why Adam and Eve did not (as it seems) have intercourse in Paradise. [b][color="green"][61][/color][/b] It was after the Fall that they, to use the biblical term, [i]knew [/i]each other. [b][color="green"][62][/color][/b][/size]
[size=4] I feel that the expressiveness of the biblical term war­rants a reading with rich pastoral and spiritual overtones.[/size]
[size=4]Canon law puts personal consent at the heart of the constitution of the matrimonial covenant, and insists that no human power can replace this consent (c.1057, § 2). It does not seem necessary to suppose that divine power—God's will—replaced the human consent of Adam and Eve. One can surely say rather that they—knowing they had been created by God to be husband and wife—joyfully accepted and ratified this divine choice. If they did not have intercourse in Paradise, however, this was no doubt because they were not yet "ready for it"; they were still, we might say, in the period of courtship, in the process of getting to know each other spousally; and the act of intercourse—as involving the fullness of spousal dona­tion, self-revelation, and knowledge—would, at that stage, not yet [i]have made sense.[/i][b][color="green"][63][/color][/b][/size]
[/quote]

[Selah]

[quote][color=#282828]4. [/color][i]Procreation.[/i][color=#282828] Before the fall there was no procreation. I repeat, for thus saith the Holy Word, before the fall there was no procreation. Adam and Eve, in their Edenic state, could not have children, nor, as we shall see, could any form of life when first placed on the newly created paradisiacal earth.[/color][/quote]

That...comes from a Mormon site. disregard it, it comes from a heretical site.

[Mark of the Cross]

[quote name='Selah' timestamp='1330302567' post='2393391']
That...comes from a Mormon site. disregard it, it comes from a heretical site.
[/quote]
I know, that's why I warned it. And it does appear very literalistic. It's just that it seemed to summerise Augustine, except possibly the last sentence which is what I have been wondering if that's what people are referring to with the statement 'Procreation before the fall.'
Are they talking about animals? Since if we take a literal creation interpretation there would be no human procreation since A&E were the first humans It seems to me that in a non literal Genesis, sex would be normal,natural and not a sin until it was abused by humans attaining knowledge of good and evil.

[LadyOfSorrows]

Ah...I'm not asking if they HAD sexual intercourse in Eden, that is not the issue.

[Mark of the Cross]

[quote name='LadyOfSorrows' timestamp='1330311011' post='2393458']
Ah...I'm not asking if they HAD sexual intercourse in Eden, that is not the issue.


[/quote]
[i]Genesis 2 [url="http://www.drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=1&ch=2&l=24#x"][24][/url] Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh[/i]
Mother and father were mentioned as Gods intention (prior to the fall) for man and woman to leave to become one. How do you have a father & mother if not by procreation?
Since procreation was not relevant to the fall and the fall was inevitable simply because mankinds nature is prone to the devils temptation, why would physical procreation be any different?

Edited February 27, 2012 by Mark of the Cross