[Just mythoughts]

We know that he had been married, but we know that only because his mother-in-law is mentioned. His wife is never mentioned. We have to infer her existence from the mention o his mother-in-law. It’s a proper inference. But since he’s never portrayed as “actively” married and his wife is not mentioned, no children are ever mentioned: who knows whether she was even living at the time he left his nets to follow Jesus or, if she was living(possible) whether they had marital relations after that. Telling the world whether you and your wife are doing the deed regularly or not is not something most of us are going to do. It’s not exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to make its way into Scripture. Nothing in Scripture precludes the possibility that Peter and his wife practiced continence after he was chosen to be the head of the Twelve, if she was even still living at that point.

When did this fixation upon the sex or intimacy begin? One certainly cannot find Scriptural basis for such fixation.

[Houghton M.]

The fixation began when Protestants began insisting that Peter’s having been married was a big deal. You’re the one fixated on sex because you get your knickers in a knot when anyone claims that sex can be abstained from without being weird.

Ancient peoples knew that. Greek Philosophers abstained from marriage and sex for the love of wisdom. Every religion recognizes that sex is not the be-all and end-all, so they have various kinds of abstinence and selfcontrol.

The fixation began with Martin Luther who was obsessed with it. He declared that marriage was not as sacrament, was purely natural phenomenon, should not be abstained from, that abstinence was unnatural and a lot of people agreed with him.

They are the ones who were obsessed with sex. The rest of us have a nuanced, controlled, disciplined approach to it, even in marriage because marriage is NOT JUST ABOUT SEX. And life is NOT JUST ABOUT SEX. Pity that Martin Luther didn’t understand that.