• @Drivebyhaiku
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    13 hours ago

    I think you are looking too narrowly at explicit mention of specific things and missing the forest for the trees a bit. It’s smaller and in places but look at his appeal to widows and the unmarried in Corinthians

    “To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”

    Marriage and sexuallity is a failure state for Paul. A lack of control over one’s Holy Temple of a body. He outlines the only circumstances one can have sex that isn’t a complete affront to God because he veiws the desire and need for it at all as weakness that is a tough sell a lot of his followers. It’s not so much a guidebook to pleasure, it’s creation of a roped off private circumstances to indulge a shameful human desire.

    If you’re interested I recommend going back and reading his letters again but from the imagined perspective that Paul is a sex repulsed asexual who holds his own perspective on sex as the most sacred option. There’s some interesting queer discussion on the matter out there.