Annotatio LXIII

”But Adam knew his wife.” — Genesis 4:1

Chrysostom, in homily 18 on Genesis, when he wished to unravel this passage, asserted that, if the first parents had not sinned, there would have been no →¹

[there would have been no] coitus in paradise: because before sin they were not subject to these bodily necessities; for the law of the venereal matter [sexual desire] entered only after sin. For then [after sin] God granted that the human race should be increased through coitus.

Procopius, following the same opinion, in the exposition of the same passage says more openly that, had there been no human transgression, there would have been neither matrimony, nor nuptials, nor coitus, nor propagation of offspring. You have the antidote to this opinion above, in Annotations 20 and 21.