Augustine countered that our way of reproducing was corrupted by Adam and Eve and has remained corrupted ever since. It is impossible, even for the most pious married couple determined to restrain their sexual intercourse within the narrowest approved boundaries, to get anywhere at all “without the ardor of lust” (On Marriage). And this ardor, to which Augustine gives the technical name “concupiscence,” was not simply a natural endowment or a divine blessing; it was a curse, a mark of punishment, a touch of evil. The action of a married man and woman who intend to beget a child is not evil,
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