Corrupt nature shuns marriage
Posted on March 14th, 2012
So savage and corrupt is human nature. Marriage is necessary as a remedy for lust, and through marriage God permits sexual intercourse. Not only does He cover the sin from which we are unable to abstain, but He also blesses the union of the male and the female. And yet the whole world shuns this legitimate, divinely instituted union and prefers to indulge in promiscuous relations, which are harmful in more than one way. Property is squandered, bodies are damaged by serious diseases, God is provoked to inflict horrible punishments, and, worst of all, states and households are destroyed.
Why do we not avoid these great evils? Why do we not prefer to seek the blessing of God through a legitimate union? Obviously because our nature is corrupted by sin, rebellious, and intolerant of laws, and does not want to be tamed or restrained.
Tagged: Genesis, Human nature, Lust, Luther, Marriage, original sin, Promiscuity, Sexuality
“[Through marriage] He covers the sin from which we are unable to abstain…”
– So Luther maintains, as I believe Augustine did also, that even marital sexual intercourse is a sin. How can this be so — except in the sense that since the Fall, all human actions are corrupted by sin — but this does not make them sinful by their very nature. After all, the command to “be fruitful and multiply” was given before the Fall. I know Augustine maintained that prelapsarian intercourse would have taken place without any desire, feeling, or physical pleasure attached to it, just a purely rational act under control of the will, a view I consider nonsensical.
I don’t read Luther’s statement that way; I think he means we are unable to abstain from sexual lust; marriage provides the holy outlet for it.