 Augustine’s views on sexuality are most prominent in his anti-Pelagian treatises, where he develops a theory about the transmission of original sin from the first couple in paradise to every human being born since, making sexual concupiscence the prime factor in the process (cf. E. Clark 1996 and 2000, who also takes into account Augustine’s Manichean past). In Augustine’s ethics, concupiscence (concupiscentia) does not have a specifically sexual meaning but is an umbrella term that covers all volitions or intentions opposed to right love (see   Nisula 2012). The transgression of Adam and Eve did not consist in sexual concupiscence but in their disobedience, which, like the evil angels’ primal sin, was rooted in pride (see  7.5 Will and Evil).  For this disobedience they, and all humankind with them, were punished with the disobedience of their own selves, i.e., the impossibility of fully controlling their own appetites and volitions and the permanent akratic state (the “coveting of the flesh against the spirit”, in the words of Galatians 5:17) that marks fallen humanity. The inability of human beings to control their sexual desires and even their sexual organs (witness the shameful experiences of involuntary male erection or of impotence: De civitate dei 14.15–16) is just an especially obvious example. Unlike most earlier Christian writers, Augustine thought that there was sexual intercourse in paradise and that there would have been procreation even without the fall; he did not share the encratic ideas of some ascetic circles who hoped to make good for the first sin through sexual abstinence, and he had comparatively moderate views on virginity and sexual continence (De sancta virginitate; Børresen 2013: 138; Brown 1988: ch. 19). But he thought that Adam and Eve had been able to control their sexual organs voluntarily so as to limit their use to the natural purpose of procreation; in paradise, there had been sexuality but no concupiscence (De civitate dei 14.21–23). Original sin had destroyed this ideal state, and since then sexual concupiscence is an inevitable concomitant of procreation—an evil that may be put to good use in legitimate marriage, where the purpose of sexual intercourse is the procreation of children rather than bodily pleasure (De nuptiis et concupiscentia 1.16; Contra Iulianum 3.15–16), but that nevertheless subjects every newborn human being to the domination of the devil from which they need to be freed through baptism (De nuptiis et concupiscentia 1.25–26; for energetic criticism of Augustine’s views on concupiscence, inter alia because of their impact on the sex morals of modern Christianity, see Pagels 1989, for moderate defense Lamberigts 2000).