Traité de la virginité

Description

Engl. transl. (Moore & Wilson's translation, which, besides being Protestant, isn't as good as Callahan's here)

Grégoire de Nysse. Introduction, texte critique, traduction, commentaire et index de Michel Aubineau

St. Gregory of Nyssa thought that if all of mankind embraced continence, then God would create new humans in a manner similar to how he created Adam, out of the earth. St. Thomas Aquinas summarizes St. Gregory's view in Summa Theologica I q. 98 a. 2 ("Whether in the state of innocence there would have been generation by coition?") co.:

Gregory of Nyssa says (De Hom. Opif. xvii) that in paradise the human race would have been multiplied by some other means, as the angels were multiplied without coition by the operation of the Divine Power. He adds that God made man male and female before sin, because He foreknew the mode of generation which would take place after sin, which He foresaw.

St. Thomas disagrees:

But this is unreasonable. For what is natural to man [e.g., sexual intercourse] was neither acquired nor forfeited by sin.