Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4)

religion-and-sex

• Each major precept comes under a 'triple determination': by nature, by philosophical reason, by the word of God—codification consistent with Stoic schools.

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• From Clement to Augustine: the difference between a Stoicizing Christianity naturalizing sexual ethics and an austere Christianity conceiving nature only through the fall.

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obedience-and-authority

• Baptism stamps a sign: those who receive it bear within them the sign of their belonging and commitment, like a brand on livestock or a tattoo on a soldier's arm.

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• Baptism must be prepared and extended by mortification and spiritual combat—the subject establishes a complex, strenuous relationship with himself.

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self-and-identity

• Not a code of permitted and forbidden acts, but a whole technique for monitoring thought—its irregular flow, images, memories, impulses communicated between body and soul.

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• Cassian focuses attention nowhere on actual sexual relations or partners—nowhere the categories that will constitute the great codification of sins of lust in the Middle Ages.

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