Augustine in His Own Words
(15.29) . . . As you say, very well and truly, the reason why marital modesty praises those living in continence is that they do not need the cure that it sees itself needing, as the Apostle says: "But if they do not have self-control, let them marry" (1 Cor 7:9). Why do you acknowledge need for a cure for concupiscence, yet contradict me when I say concupiscence is a disease? If you acknowledge a cure, acknowledge the disease. If you deny the disease, deny the cure. I ask you at last to yield to the truth that speaks to you even through your own mouth. No one provides a cure to the healthy.
(16.30) You say correctly: "On close examination, we see that marriage cannot be pleasing if it is praised only by comparing it with something evil." This is true. Marriage is by all means good in its own kind, but the reason it is good is because it preserves the fidelity of the marriage bed, because it unites the two sexes for the purpose of raising offspring, and because it is terrified of the impiety of separation. These are the goods of marriage that make marriage itself good.93 As we have often said, such marriage could have existed even if no one had sinned. After sin, however, and not because of happiness, but of necessity, a struggle came to marriage so that it, by its very goodness, must now battle against the evil of concupiscence, not allowing it to do anything unlawful, though concupiscence itself, acting now gently and relaxed, now with rapid waves of intense passion, never ceases to urge it on, and marriage makes good use of its evil in the propagation of children. Who can deny that this is an evil except one unwilling to hear the Apostle's warning: "But this I say as a concession, not as a command" (1 Cor 7:6)? When married couples have sexual intercourse, overcome by desire not for having offspring, but for the sheer physical pleasure of it, this is not to be praised, but is excused in comparison with what is worse because marriage intercedes and pleads on their behalf.
(22.51) Since this is so, we see that marriage as marriage is good and that a human being as a human being, whether born of marriage or of adultery, is good because as human, one is God's creation. And yet because one is born with and from the evil that marital chastity uses well, it is necessary that one be freed from the bond of this evil by rebirth. Why do you ask, "Where is original evil?" when the sexual desire you fight against in yourself speaks to you more eloquently than you yourself speak when you praise it? Why do you ask, "How does a human being whom God made come under the devil's power?" How, then, is one in [the power of] death, something God did not
93. "The goods of marriage . . .": Augustine refers here to his treatise On the Good of Marriage (De bono conjugali), in which he outlines several goods: (1) friendship and fidelity of the couple; (2) the propagation of children, raised in the social framework of the family; (3) the sacramental indissolubility, symbolic of God's faithfulness. On this, see David G. Hunter, "Bono conjugali, De" and "Marriage," AugEncy, 110–11; 535– 37. For a collection of texts with commentary, see Elizabeth A. Clark, ed., St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996).