The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: The Story That Created Us

by Stephen Greenblatt

The core of the problem, Julian argued, was Augustine’s view of sex, and for once Augustine completely agreed. Julian believed that the human experience of sexual intercourse was natural and healthy, an essential part of God’s design reaching back to the moment when He commanded the first humans to be fruitful and multiply. It was here, Augustine contended, that Pelagians made their crucial mistake. For sex as we know it is not natural and not healthy. The problem is not merely with sex outside of marriage, with practices and positions not focused on procreation, and with homosexuality—though Augustine, along with many others, assailed these all as abominations. The problem is that even the most legitimate form of sexual intercourse—between a husband and wife mutually bent on engendering a child—is also corrupt. The current of sinfulness that courses through it is precisely the mechanism that carries the stain of evil from one generation to the next and infects the dreams of those most determined to keep themselves pure and chaste. Human sinfulness is a sexually transmitted disease.