Fifteen centuries separate Augustine’s “forbidden by no law” from the confidence with which the opposite is often taught today. I found no coordinated deception in the record. I found teachers working inside the law, philosophy, pastoral problems, and inherited assumptions of their own times. Later generations often received the conclusion without retracing all of that reasoning.
History cannot decide what God permits, but it can show us which parts of our confidence came through later interpreters. Once we know that, we can go back to the passages and ask whether the familiar reading still explains them best.
Every quotation is tied to a source record you can open. Those records identify disputes and any collation still in progress. If you find a quotation, date, or characterization that needs correction, please send it and the change will be dated publicly.
This history does not settle the biblical question. The Texts section has the eight central passages, each with the Hebrew or Greek and a close translation.
