Cheryl Schatz

Charis,

You said:

And though I agree that a woman’s desire for her husband is much more than physical, just think how it would be if she never ever had any sexual desire except during fertility (like animals). I think it would take away a lot of the sexualization of media, the exploitation of women, and it would make women much less dependent upon male opinion. And I think men would adjust.

I am not 100% sure of what you are getting at but the way this is worded comes across as if sexual intimacy is only dependent on a woman’s desire. I think that mutual respect means giving even when you don’t always want to give and/or respecting the other person’s need to not be forced.

Think of two children together. They never think about sex (hopefully). That’s how I see them in the Garden. They were God’s children.

I don’t see this in scripture. God created the man and woman not as young children, but as full grown mature adults. The marriage that God performed by bringing the woman to the man had nothing to do with any childlike state that they were in. If so, then I would think he would have waited to bring them together in marriage until they were emotionally and/or physically ready for marriage. Since God didn’t wait for that, we can reason it through that they were ready for marriage.

Neither children nor animals are sex obsessed

That is true, but Adam and Eve were neither children nor were they animals. And when God brought them together he didn’t identify their “one flesh union” as sex obsession. I do think that sex obsession probably did come into play after the fall and Adam’s domination of his wife may have included demands from someone who was not respectful of his wife. But do I think this was the case in the garden pre-fall? No. I think they experienced the very best that God intended marriage to be before the fall.

And I think “desire” of Genesis 3:16 has a libido component. I think the frequency of sexual activity increased after the Fall.

The problem is that “desire” was not a change made in the man, so to reason this way would mean that man’s desire in the garden was frustrated and only fulfilled once sin occurred. This doesn’t seem to be a natural reading of the text.

Interesting that God never even mentioned Adam KNOWING his wife pre-Fall. If it was such a central part of what marriage is all about then its odd that it is really unclear that they ever even had sex before the Fall.

The “one-flesh union” mention is a clear indication that their bonding was not merely emotional. In the after-fall account the “knowing” is attached to conception. Since there was no conception before Eve’s conception was “greatly increased” after the fall, there was no need to expand on “one flesh union” regarding the pre-fall life in the garden.

This is where so many go wrong in thinking that sex is somehow not quite right because it didn’t happen until sin entered the world. What people need to realize is that it isn’t sex that was the focus as if sex was something new, but the conception was the focus and it was a new component to their relationship.