Is there anyone here who’s actually read The City of God? That would be a lot more useful than having read Panatti. Who knows whether Panatti is correctly summarizing The City of God?
Saying “the whole point” might be overstressing it, but it’s basically correct. You might want to read All of 1 Cor 7, since the answer is right before and right after the passage that’s already been quoted and I think it’s important to always check the context of any verse citation.
Verses 7 and 8 say: 8 Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. 9 But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
Verses 1 and 2 say: 1 Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry. 2 But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.
You want to read it? Here’s a translation The City of God Against The Pagans
Note “Book XIV. Of the punishment and results of man’s first sin, and of the propagation of man without lust.”
“propagation of man without lust”? Could it be Passionless Procreation?
“What friend of wisdom and holy joys, who, being married, but knowing, as the apostle says, how to possess his vessel in santification and honor, not in the disease of desire, as the Gentiles who know not God, 1 Thessalonians 4:4 would not prefer, if this were possible , to beget children without this lust, so that in this function of begetting offspring the members created for this purpose should not be stimulated by the heat of lust, but should be actuated by his volition, in the same way as his other members serve him for their respective ends?”
Again, Passionless Procreation (from chapter 16)
“Chapter 18.— Of the Shame Which Attends All Sexual Intercourse.”
Note that he doesn’t say sex out of wedlock. He says all sex.
You’re giving the impression that you don’t know much about the influence of this work (Civitas Dei, not Panatti) on the medieval and early modern Roman church. Huge would be an understatement. Augustine is not an obscure writer, and his negative views on cupiditas (“desire”) vs. love (caritas) are well known and pretty easy to find on the internet. I looked at half a dozen sources on Google Books and they were all consistent with what’s been posted here. If you have to pick a single writer to represent pre-modern Christian thought, Augustine is one of maybe a half-dozen go-to guys. The Wikipedia article isn’t very good, but Catholic Encyclopedia is. Here’s the summary page: go have a look at C. 14 and get back to us with your objections.
Then why did DocCathode only mention Augustine in the context of what he had read in Panatti? It sure sounded to me like DocCathode only knew what Augustine had said from the quotations in Panatti. Since Augustine is that important a Christian writer, someone explaining what Augustine had written should have read The City of God himself and not be quoting from Panatti’s summary of it.
I don’t think so. Even if Sodom was destroyed for general inhospitality, the English word sodomy means some sort of sexual “immorality” (I imagine it’s a reference to the attempted rape, whatever the connection of that incident to the destruction). If we somehow learned that Sodom was actually destroyed for rampant theft, it would not follow that sodomy means theft, theoretically or otherwise. If the Bible used a term like sodomy we could argue about what the Bible meant by it, but that’s not the case. Similarly, onanism does not mean failure to perform one’s levirate duty.
I’m not sure of the connection between the first part and “missionary position”. Does sex in that position generally take less time? Is it widely regarded as less pleasurable than other positions? (I’m aware that different people prefer different positions. Missionary seems to be among the favorites though, even among the sexually liberated.)
I don’t know if there’s going to be a single answer to this. It’s highly possible the reason was that someone had got it into his head that missionary was the normal position and just went from there.
But, there are some distinct differences. For one, there aren’t any animals using the missionary position, which helps make it seem less carnal. You’ve got face-to-face contact better than any other position and certainly better than than in any other woman below position. Missionary is well-suited for having sex without needing to see anyone naked.
You may recall it, but you need a cite for it. Especially if you claim that Falwell ever talked about Lilith.
Not true, although it’s possible you’re conflating “positions”, such as doggy-style vaginal intercourse, with actual anal sex. No state criminalizes positions in which people may have vaginal intercourse. Some states do criminalize oral or anal sex.
My link in post #6 covers a lot of this directly, unfortunately it does not let you paste any of the text.
OK, I found something, Falwell’s newspaper the National Liberty Journal denounced Lilith Fair as promoting feminism, abortion, lesbianism & paganism, and also the fact that it was named for a demonic figure. No mention of Falwell himself saying word one about Lilith or about sexual positions.
I never did get to attend one. I’d have liked to, because I like Sarah McL’s music & a lot of other femme-emo-type music, but I am absolutely sure if I had attended one, I’d have seen plenty of tables from groups promoting feminism, abortion choice, lesbianism & paganism, and OF COURSE Lilith was a demonic figure. She was part of Sumerian myth before she ever was incorporated into Hebrew lore.
I remember my older sister after “The Talk” with mom came away shaking her head. Mother apparently told her that good women did not have sex in certain ways.
As I listened to my sister later tell about the conversation, she said, “The whole time the thought kept running through my head, ‘I am not a good woman, and I have no desire to be.’”
Some of the other great apes, including gorillas and bonobos, have been observed to use the missionary position.
Thought you had a thing for Mr. Fallwell… 
Yes, but it’s thought to reflect the influence of European missionaries in Africa.