Gnostic ideals about sex do not desire procreation of flesh. Virginity becomes a supreme virtue for the Gnostic anti-Christs, for it most certainly leads to the cessation of life in the flesh.
God of the Old Covenant/ Old Testament is creator of the world of flesh, and is an evil demiurge according to Marcion and the Gnostics.
His God, Christ of the New Testament, shuns and avoids sex as the higher path.
Gnosticism figures in prominently to the early church. Orthodoxy of course rejects it in the extremes, but the question is how much has infilitrated the original apostolic teachings through outside non-apostolic sources, and the culture that they grew out of.; sources such as the very popular PofJ.
The PofJ by the way is not usually associated with Gnosticism according to most of my readings anyway, but when compared to Gnostic ideals, its soft(or not so soft) Gnosticism becomes apparent.
This ,by the way, is not just a problem of gnostic creep into the more tradition-based forms of Christianity, though the cult of virginity is no longer as prominent even in the tradition-based forms as it was in early Christianity. It canbecome problem with Christianity in general, as the battle against carnal desires of the flesh become a battle against stinking flesh and the body itself.
It is a suptle point being made here, where being in the flesh might mean being ruled by the carnal desires of the flesh, but it is not the flesh, but the voice of the serpent speaking through our fleshly desires, which is where the evil lies.
Virginity cult not only seeks to deny fleshly desires, but more than this, the body itself, procreation even.
The purity of Mary simply does not lie not in abstaining from sexual relations with her husband. Her immaculate purity lies in her abundance of grace and her intimate and personal relationship with the Trinity.
Saying that she did not have sexual relationships with Joseph in no way adds to her purity, or her chasteness. If anything, it takes away from that, for our relationships with God are most fully expressed in the love that we show to each other.
Husband and wife, and the one-flesh union is sacramental too, and fully sanctioned by God and Church, after all.
It is no coincidence that cult of virginity is associated with pseudo-apostolic teachings, and gnostic texts. Suffice it say, that no matter how popular the cult of virginity was very early in church history , how much it increasingly became proclaimed as dogma by the early ecclesiastical authorities of the fourth and fifth centuries, gnostic influences were always strong in the church too, always were present, even until now.
That is why it is important to contemplate the fact that this is according to no known apostolic teaching, this idea that the brothers of Jesus were not brothers in the flesh, this associated idea that Mary was the prototype for the Virginity cults of Christianity.
John forewarns us of anti-christ. The teachings may well be soft and seductive, even pristine and beautiful, but virginity is no a teaching that grows out of the faith of Jesus and the Jews. It is very much foreign to that soil.
That is important to at least contemplate.
It is also important to contemplate how for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is not coincidence that Our Immaculate Madonna has been now followed by Madonna in our age of reaction, and Lady Gaga too.
