The Redemption of Man and the Rejection of “Holy Sex”
A Patristic and Scholastic Disputation Against the Modern Exaltation of Carnal Pleasure
“The first man Adam was made into a living soul; the last Adam into a quickening spirit.”
—1 Corinthians 15:45
Prologue: The Question Before Us
There is a fundamental question which must be asked before we speak of the holiness of sexual pleasure:
What is man?
And immediately after that:
What became of man through the Fall?
For if we begin with fallen man as though his present condition were the standard of human nature, we shall inevitably mistake the wounds of the Fall for the original design of God.
This is precisely the danger in the modern exaltation of sexuality.
The question is no longer merely:
"Is marital intercourse lawful?"
The Catholic tradition already answers that question.
The more profound question is:
"What ought the Christian to desire within the marital act?"
And here a profound difference appears between the ascetical tradition of the Fathers and the modern therapeutic conception of sexuality.
The modern conception tends toward this:
The more intensely the spouses experience sexual pleasure, the more deeply they experience marital love.
The ancient Christian conception asks another question:
Is the pleasure itself something to be pursued, or is it an involuntary accompaniment of a natural act whose legitimate end lies elsewhere?
This distinction is not minor.
It concerns whether Christianity seeks to sanctify fallen concupiscence by pursuing it, or whether Christianity seeks, through grace, to heal and overcome the disorder introduced by the Fall.
I. Christ Came to Restore Man
The Christian faith begins with the Incarnation.
The Son of God became man.
He did not merely come to forgive individual acts.
He came to restore humanity.
He is the New Adam.
Adam was the head of fallen humanity.
Christ is the head of redeemed humanity.
Therefore the humanity of Christ possesses enormous theological significance.
Whatever belongs essentially to perfect human nature cannot be absent from Christ.
Christ possesses:
a true human body,
a true human soul,
a human intellect,
a human will,
human emotions,
human affections,
hunger,
thirst,
fatigue,
suffering,
sorrow,
friendship,
labor,
obedience,
and death.
Yet there is something conspicuously absent from His earthly life:
carnal generation.
He never exercised the generative act.
He never married.
He never fathered children.
He remained a virgin.
And yet no Christian dares to say that Christ's humanity was incomplete.
Therefore we have established our first principle:
Carnal generation is not necessary for the perfection of human nature.
II. The New Eve Is Also a Virgin
Nor does Christ stand alone.
Beside the New Adam stands the New Eve.
From the earliest centuries, the Church Fathers drew the parallel:
Eve — Mary.
Eve receives the word of the serpent.
Mary receives the word of the angel.
Eve disobeys.
Mary obeys.
Eve participates in the entrance of death.
Mary participates in the entrance of Life.
St. Irenaeus explicitly describes Eve as a virgin when she disobeyed, while presenting Mary as the virgin whose obedience unties Eve's knot.
This is not incidental.
It means that the beginning of fallen humanity and the beginning of redeemed humanity are both marked by virginity.
And therefore the Church possesses a remarkable theological symmetry:
The Old Adam and Old Eve begin in virginity.
The New Adam and New Eve restore humanity in virginity.
The highest human beings in history—Christ and Mary—do not teach us that sexual fulfillment constitutes human fulfillment.
They teach us precisely the opposite.
III. The Patristic Witness Concerning Paradise
Here we must proceed carefully.
The Church has not defined as dogma precisely how Adam and Eve would have multiplied had they never fallen.
But there is a significant and ancient patristic tradition which understands Adam and Eve to have remained virgins in Paradise.
St. Irenaeus explicitly describes Eve as a virgin when she sinned.
St. Jerome explicitly speaks of Adam and Eve as virgins in Paradise.
St. Gregory of Nyssa goes further, asking how humanity would have multiplied had the Fall not occurred. His remarkable speculation is that humanity could have multiplied by a mode unlike the postlapsarian mode of sexual generation, comparing it to the increase of the angelic nature.
This is important because it demonstrates something frequently forgotten:
The Fathers did not regard Genesis 1:28 as necessarily proving that fallen-style carnal intercourse was God's original mechanism for human multiplication.
God commanded:
"Be fruitful and multiply."
But Scripture does not tell us the precise manner in which this would have occurred in the state of original justice.
Consequently, we must not simply assume that the sexual experience of fallen humanity represents the original divine design.
IV. The First Recorded Carnal Generation Occurs After the Fall
The chronology of Genesis is itself striking.
Adam and Eve are created.
They are placed in Paradise.
They sin.
Their eyes are opened.
They become ashamed of their nakedness.
They are judged.
They are expelled.
And only afterward does Scripture say:
"And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bore Cain."
We must not claim that this verse by itself proves that intercourse was impossible before the Fall.
It does not.
But it establishes something undeniable:
The first carnal union that Scripture records occurs after the Fall.
And when this is read together with the patristic tradition concerning Adam and Eve's virginity, a profound theological possibility emerges:
Perhaps the carnal mode of generation known to fallen humanity belongs not to the original perfection of man, but to the postlapsarian condition.
That proposition is not defined doctrine.
But neither is it a modern invention.
It has deep roots in patristic reflection.
V. What Changed at the Fall?
Here we arrive at the heart of the matter.
The Fall did not create the human body.
The body was created good.
It did not create the generative power.
That too belongs to creation.
What the Fall did was introduce disorder into human nature.
The Fathers, especially Augustine, describe a profound change in the relationship between the rational will and the bodily appetites.
Before the Fall, man possessed an extraordinary harmony.
His lower powers obeyed reason.
After the Fall, the body no longer obeyed the rational will with the same perfection.
This is why Adam and Eve immediately experience shame.
The sexual members have become a particularly striking sign of the rebellion of the flesh.
The very members which previously would have been obedient to reason are now capable of movements which occur without the command of the will.
This is the origin of the Christian doctrine of concupiscence.
VI. Concupiscence Is Not Willed
Here we must make an absolutely necessary distinction.
Concupiscence is not identical with personal sin.
A temptation can arise without being chosen.
A passion can arise without being consented to.
A movement of the sensitive appetite can occur without the rational will approving it.
The Council of Trent later codifies this distinction in its teaching concerning concupiscence after Baptism.
Thus the fallen Christian can experience a movement which he did not choose.
He is not guilty merely because the movement occurred.
But neither should he call the movement itself good.
It remains a wound of fallen nature.
And this distinction is fundamental to our argument.
VII. The Problem With “Holy Sex”
Suppose, then, that a husband and wife enter the marital act.
They intend children.
They intend fidelity.
They intend the good of marriage.
Their intention is therefore not evil.
But the fallen sexual appetite may nevertheless produce movements of concupiscence which they did not choose and cannot simply eliminate by an act of the will.
The question then becomes:
What should the Christian do with this involuntary concupiscence?
The traditional ascetical answer is:
Do not consent to it.
Do not make it the object of your will.
Do not deliberately cultivate it.
Do not turn the appetite itself into an object of pursuit.
Rather, receive what is lawful according to the order of marriage while allowing grace gradually to restore the sovereignty of reason over the passions.
This is the logic of Christian asceticism.
And here the modern language of "toe-curling" and "mind-blowing" pleasure presents a serious theological problem.
VIII. The Difference Between Receiving Pleasure and Pursuing Pleasure
The distinction is crucial.
A married couple may perform the marital act for its legitimate natural and marital goods.
Pleasure may accompany the act.
They did not necessarily choose the precise intensity of that pleasure.
But there is a radically different proposition:
"Let us deliberately cultivate the maximum possible sexual pleasure because this intensity itself is a good we should seek."
Now the object of the will has changed.
The Christian is no longer merely accepting an involuntary accompaniment of the natural act.
He is deliberately pursuing the sensation.
And this is precisely where the traditional ascetical critique becomes relevant.
The Fathers taught Christians to resist the domination of the passions.
Modern sexual spirituality can instead encourage them to maximize the passions.
Those are profoundly different spiritualities.
IX. The Great Inversion
The traditional Christian hierarchy is:
God → reason → virtue → rightly ordered bodily action → accompanying pleasure.
The modern therapeutic hierarchy tends toward:
desire → pleasure → emotional fulfillment → God-approved relationship.
The difference is enormous.
In the first, pleasure is subordinate.
In the second, pleasure becomes an object of pursuit.
The Christian tradition says:
Enjoy what is good according to reason.
The modern sexual culture says:
Discover the greatest pleasure you can experience without violating the rules.
Those are not the same moral theology.
X. Marriage Does Not Make Concupiscence Holy
Marriage is holy.
The sacrament is holy.
The covenant is holy.
Children are holy gifts from God.
Fidelity is holy.
But none of these propositions logically entails:
Therefore every movement of sexual appetite occurring within marriage is itself holy.
That would confuse the goodness of the context with the goodness of every passion experienced within that context.
The ancient tradition never required such confusion.
Marriage gives the generative act its lawful context.
It does not abolish the wound of the Fall.
The sacrament gives grace.
It does not make concupiscence cease to be concupiscence.
Indeed, if Baptism itself does not remove concupiscence, why should marriage be supposed to do so?
XI. The Marriage Goods "Excuse" the Act Without Making Concupiscence Good
The older language concerning the "excuse" of marital intercourse must therefore be understood correctly.
The argument is not:
"Intercourse is wholly evil, but marriage gives God a reason to overlook it."
That would be a caricature.
Rather:
The natural generative act is a good belonging to marriage, but in fallen humanity the exercise of that faculty is accompanied by concupiscence. The legitimate goods of marriage make the act lawful and honorable; they do not transform the concupiscent disorder itself into a good.
Thus:
the natural good remains good;
the wound remains a wound;
and personal sin occurs only when the will knowingly embraces what ought to be resisted.
This is a much more exact account of the traditional position.
XII. Christ Does Not "Sanctify" Concupiscence
Here the modern conception encounters a decisive Christological problem.
Christ possesses human sexuality in the sense that He possesses a true human body.
Yet He has no concupiscence.
He does not marry.
He does not generate.
He remains virgin.
Therefore Christ does not redeem sexuality by showing us how to maximize its pleasures.
He redeems humanity by restoring humanity to perfect union with God.
Christ's human passions are perfectly ordered.
His humanity is not characterized by the intensification of sexual desire.
It is characterized by:
charity,
obedience,
purity,
sacrifice,
prayer,
suffering,
and complete union with the Father.
This is redeemed humanity.
XIII. The Holy Family Is the Antithesis of Erotic Fulfillment as the Measure of Marriage
Look, therefore, upon the Holy Family.
Jesus is virgin.
Mary is virgin.
Joseph, according to the ancient and universal tradition concerning their marriage, is continent.
And yet this household possesses:
love,
fidelity,
sacrifice,
family,
fatherhood,
motherhood,
obedience,
and sanctification.
What is absent?
Sexual intercourse.
And yet nothing essential to authentic human love is absent.
This destroys the modern assumption that erotic fulfillment is necessary for complete marital love.
It is not.
The Holy Family proves it.
XIV. The New Adam and New Eve Reveal Humanity's True End
The question is therefore not:
"How sexually fulfilled can human beings become?"
It is:
"What does perfect humanity look like?"
Look at Christ.
Look at Mary.
The answer is not erotic fulfillment.
It is holiness.
It is charity.
It is perfect obedience.
It is virginity.
It is complete possession of God.
And the final destiny of humanity confirms this.
Our Lord says:
"In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage."
Marriage and carnal generation belong to the present order.
They are not the final destiny of mankind.
The resurrection reveals the ultimate horizon toward which humanity is moving.
XV. The Eschatological Argument
If sexual generation were intrinsic to the perfection of humanity, its disappearance in the resurrection would be inexplicable.
But it is not inexplicable.
Generation exists because human beings die and generations succeed one another.
In the resurrection, death is abolished.
There is no need to replace the human race.
There is no need for biological succession.
Humanity reaches its consummation.
Thus the final human state is one in which:
no marriage is contracted,
no children are generated,
no carnal union is necessary,
and yet humanity is more fully human than it has ever been.
Therefore:
Carnal generation cannot be man's final perfection because it is absent from man's final perfection.
XVI. The Two Adams
The contrast is now complete.
The First Adam
He is created in integrity.
He is placed in Paradise.
He possesses dominion over his passions.
He falls.
Human nature becomes wounded.
Concupiscence appears.
Death enters.
Human generation continues in a fallen world.
The New Adam
He enters a fallen world.
He possesses perfect human nature.
He possesses no concupiscence.
He remains virgin.
He suffers.
He dies.
He rises.
He restores humanity.
And He leads humanity toward the resurrection in which marriage and generation cease.
The theological movement is unmistakable:
Adam represents humanity before the wound.
Christ represents humanity after redemption and in perfection.
Neither the beginning nor the end of this movement requires the erotic fulfillment exalted by modern sexual spirituality.
XVII. The Modern Error Is Therefore Not That It Calls Marriage Good
That would be an unfair criticism.
The error lies deeper.
It is the tendency to make sexual pleasure itself an affirmative spiritual objective.
There is a great difference between:
"Marriage makes sexual union lawful."
and:
"Therefore spouses ought deliberately to pursue increasingly intense sexual pleasure as part of their marital spirituality."
The first is Catholic.
The second requires a theological argument that the Fathers did not make.
Indeed, it runs in the opposite direction from the traditional ascetical emphasis on continence and purification.
XVIII. The Christian Does Not Seek the Maximum Permissible Pleasure
The Christian asks a different question.
Not:
"How much pleasure may I obtain without committing mortal sin?"
But:
"What most conforms my will to Christ?"
The Christian's perfection is not measured by how intensely his passions are experienced.
It is measured by how completely his entire person belongs to God.
This is why the saints fasted.
This is why they practiced continence.
This is why virgins consecrated themselves.
This is why married Christians sometimes abstained.
This is why the Church has always praised mortification.
Not because the body is evil.
But because the body must be liberated from domination by disordered appetite.
XIX. The Question Every Catholic Sexual Theology Must Answer
Therefore the modern Catholic sexual theologian must answer this question:
Why should a Christian deliberately pursue the intensification of a pleasure arising from a faculty that, according to the ancient doctrine of the Fall, no longer possesses the original harmony it had in Paradise?
It is not enough to say:
"But it occurs within marriage."
That establishes legitimacy of the marital act.
It does not establish that maximizing pleasure is a Christian virtue.
It is not enough to say:
"But the spouses love each other."
Love does not transform every appetite into virtue.
It is not enough to say:
"But God created the body."
God created the body before the Fall.
The question is what happened to the body through the Fall and what Christ came to restore.
And it is not enough to say:
"But pleasure is natural."
Many things natural to fallen humanity are precisely what grace teaches us to discipline.
The Christian life is not the sanctification of every natural impulse.
It is the transformation of the whole person.
XX. The True Meaning of Redemption
Christ did not come merely to say:
"Your fallen desires are permissible under certain circumstances."
He came to say:
"Follow Me."
He came to restore the image of God.
He came to conquer death.
He came to heal the wounds of sin.
He came to establish the Kingdom.
He came to make man capable of divine life.
The final Christian destiny is therefore not:
maximum earthly pleasure without guilt.
It is:
perfect charity without concupiscence.
XXI. The Final Disputation
Let us therefore put the question in Scholastic form.
Objection 1
Marriage is good; therefore the pleasures of marriage should be positively pursued.
Answer
Marriage is good, but it does not follow that every pleasure associated with marriage is itself an object of Christian perfection. The natural goods of marriage and the concupiscent disorder of fallen appetite must be distinguished.
Objection 2
But sexual pleasure is natural.
Answer
The fact that something belongs to fallen human nature does not establish that its present mode belongs to man's original perfection. The Fathers distinguish the nature created by God from the disorder introduced through the Fall.
Objection 3
But spouses are not sinning if they experience pleasure.
Answer
Correct. Involuntary concupiscence is not personal sin merely by occurring. But it does not follow that Christians ought deliberately to cultivate or maximize it.
Objection 4
But sexual pleasure can strengthen marital intimacy.
Answer
It may accompany marital affection and legitimate union. But the strengthening of marital charity does not require making the intensity of sexual pleasure itself the object of pursuit.
Objection 5
But the Church permits marital intercourse.
Answer
Certainly. But permission is not the same thing as prescription, and lawful enjoyment is not the same thing as an obligation to maximize enjoyment.
XXII. The Final Verdict Against "Holy Sex"
We therefore reject neither marriage nor generation.
We reject the exaltation of carnal pleasure into a central measure of Christian marital fulfillment.
We reject the suggestion that the Christian vocation is to discover the greatest sexual intensity permitted by the boundaries of Catholic morality.
We reject the transformation of the marriage bed into a laboratory for maximizing erotic sensation.
And we reject the implicit anthropology which treats erotic fulfillment as though it were necessary for becoming fully human.
For the Fathers give us another anthropology.
Adam and Eve in Paradise.
The Fall.
Concupiscence.
The Virgin Mary.
The Virgin Christ.
The Holy Family.
The Cross.
The Resurrection.
And between them all stands one principle:
Humanity is fulfilled not by satisfying every appetite, but by being perfectly united to God.
XXIII. The Final Word
Let us therefore recover the older Christian vision.
Marriage is good.
Children are good.
Fidelity is good.
The body is good.
The natural generative power is good.
But the wound of the Fall is not good.
Concupiscence is not a new sacrament.
It is not a new charism.
It is not something Christianity teaches us to celebrate merely because it occurs within marriage.
It is something Christ came to heal.
The Christian husband therefore does not say:
"How intensely can I experience this pleasure?"
He says:
"How faithfully can I love?"
He does not ask:
"How far can I take my erotic experience while remaining within the rules?"
He asks:
"How completely can my body, my passions, my marriage, and my family belong to God?"
And the answer is given not by a modern manual of erotic fulfillment but by the Church's most ancient image of redeemed humanity:
the Virgin Christ and the Virgin Mary.
The New Adam and the New Eve stand before us.
They possess perfect humanity.
They possess perfect charity.
They possess perfect bodily integrity.
They possess perfect union with God.
And they show us something that the modern world desperately needs to remember:
Man does not become more human by becoming more sexually fulfilled.
Man becomes more human by becoming more perfectly what Christ is.
For Christ did not come merely to make the fallen life permissible.
He came to make all things new.