Status Updates From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent:...

Yet when we explore Jewish and Christian writers from the first centuries of the common era, we find that they seldom talk directly about sexual behavior, and they seldom write treatises on such topics as marriage, divorce, and gender.

By the beginning of the fifth century, Augustine had actually declared that spontaneous sexual desire is the proof of - and penalty for - universal original sin, an idea that would have bafflect most of his Christian predecessors, to say nothing of his pagan and Jewish contemporaries.

One of my favorite authors.

so far, the insight that this text has given into the early days of christianity as well as the motivation and lifestyles of pagans and jews at the time is truly fascinating.

For virtue is a voluntary thing, subject to no dominion. Whatever is the result of compulsion and force cannot be virtue.