Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
Against the Pelagians 421 bates] above itself. It modestly soothes those burning [in passion] and praises those who do not need this cure.90
Augustine on Marriage
and Concupiscence
Augustine had staked out his basic position on marriage well before the Pelagian controversy. In the 390s, in Rome, there had been a fierce debate over marriage and virginity. A monk named Jovinian had argued that the married life and the celibate life were equally good. His opponent, Jerome, had tenaciously insisted on the radical superiority of celibacy and had asserted—infamously—that the only good of marriage was that it produced virgins.91 Both were rejected as extremist. Augustine entered the fray with his book On the Good of Marriage. The title is crucial: marriage is "good." Thus its real, but unstated, title is "Against Jerome."92 Augustine was one of those authors who plotted out what became the moderate middle ground: that while Christians see the life of continence as superior, marriage must be valued for its undeniable goods: not only children, but also the couple's lifelong union and partnership.
As the Pelagian controversy unfolded, however, Augustine came to locate the propagation of original sin from generation to generation in the couple's mutual sexual desire. He used the term "concupiscence" not only for sexual desire, but more broadly, for the disordering of the human will on the far side of Adam's fall. Our disordered sexual desires, he argued, are both emblematic and symptomatic of the disobedience of our lower self (not just body but also will), a just punishment meted out as a result of humanity's disobedience to God. (We saw this idea in Book 14 of City of God). In this passage, Augustine sets out his later understanding of marriage and sexuality. From Against Julian, Book 3:
(13.26) You divide, you define, you give a kind of clinical dissertation on the genus, the species, the moderation, and the excess of concupiscence. . . . Yet after all this supposedly subtle and long-winded disputation of yours, I ask you briefly and openly why this vital fire plants the root of warfare in human beings, so that the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit necessarily lusts against the flesh (Gal 5:17), why one who wills to consent to the vital fire receives a mortal wound. I presume the black ink in your book must be turning red with blushing. . . .
90. For the fragments of Julian's Ad Turbantium, see Lucas de Coninck, ed., Iuliani Aeclanensis: Expositio Libri Iob, CCL 88:340–96. The passage here is from Ad Turbantium, frag. 44–45, 47–49 (CCL 88:351–52); trans. Schumacher, FOTC 35:130–33 (modified).
91. On this Roman debate, see Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy; on Augustine's contributions, see pp. 269–84.
92. See Markus, "Augustine: A Defense of Christian Mediocrity," End of Ancient Christianity, 45–62.