Marriage and Virginity (continued)
Around the year 401 Augustine composed the first two works in this volume, The Excellence of Marriage and Holy Virginity. In his Revisions Augustine says that he wrote these two books in response to the "heresy of Jovinian."†25 Jovinian was a monk who had been condemned in the early 390s by synods at Rome and Milan. His primary offense had been to argue that neither celibacy nor ascetic fasting gained for the Christian any special merit.
According to Jerome, one of Jovinian's most vociferous opponents, Jovinian summarized his position in the following four theses:†26
1. Virgins, widows, and married women, once they have been washed in Christ, are of the same merit, if they do not differ in other works.
2. Those who have been born again in baptism with full faith cannot be overthrown by the devil.
3. There is no difference between abstinence from food and receiving it with thanksgiving.
4. There is one reward in the kingdom of heaven for all who have preserved their baptism.
It is clear from the phrasing of these propositions that baptism was a central category in Jovinian's theology. It is baptism that establishes the holiness of each Christian, Jovinian argued, not ascetic merit. Moreover, it is baptism that establishes the holiness of the Church.
Since one enters the Church through baptism and not through asceticism, holiness is possessed by all Christians alike, regardless of ascetic merit.†27
Ecclesiastical response to Jovinian was swift and unambiguous. Siricius, bishop of Rome, called his clergy into synod and condemned Jovinian's views as a diabolical perversion of the scriptures. Ambrose of Milan responded likewise, praising Siricius' initiative in protecting
Christ's flock from the savage wolves, that is, from Jovinian and his followers. From his monastery in Bethlehem the prominent scholar and ascetic teacher, Jerome, issued a scathing treatise which characterized Jovinian as "the Epicurus of the Christians," "rutting in his gardens among the young men and young women," "slippery as a snake and like another
Proteus." By 398 the emperors Honorius and Theodosius had entered the fray: Jovinian was sentenced to be flogged and exiled to the distant island of Boa.†28
Despite these various attempts to curtail Jovinian's activity, it appears that his teachings continued to spread. As Augustine noted in his Revisions:†29
Holy Church there [that is, at Rome] opposed this monster very forcefully. Nevertheless, these arguments of his, which no one dared to defend openly, had survived in the chatter and whisperings of certain persons. Therefore, it was still necessary to oppose the secretly spreading poisons with all the power which the Lord gave me, especially since they were boasting that Jovinian could not be answered by praising marriage, but only by censuring it.
One of the difficulties to which Augustine refers is the fact that opponents of Jovinian tended to defend the superiority of the celibate life by denigrating marriage. This is nowhere more apparent than in Jerome's polemical treatise Against Jovinian, which was interpreted even by some of his friends as a heretical rejection of marriage.†30 A decade after Jovinian's condemnation, Augustine tells us, there was still a need to counter his arguments with an account of marriage and celibacy that did not utterly discount the value of marriage.
When read against the backdrop of the Jovinianist controversy The Excellence of Marriage and Holy Virginity appear to be remarkably irenic and well-balanced. In these works
Augustine chose not to attack either Jovinian or Jerome directly; neither is mentioned by name in the treatises, although there are several points where Augustine refutes both of their arguments. Instead of taking a directly polemical stance, Augustine attempted to develop a genuine theology of marriage and celibacy that steered a middle path between the extremes of Jovinian and Jerome: he maintained the genuine goodness of Christian marriage (against
Jerome), while arguing for the superiority of the celibate life (against Jovinian). In the course of his discussion, Augustine developed novel conceptions of sexuality and sacramentality The result, while not always consonant with modern Christian understandings of marriage and sexuality, was for its time a remarkably humane treatment of a difficult and previously underdeveloped topic.
The starting point of Augustine's discussion in The Excellence of Marriage is the notion that human beings are social by nature. With allusions to the creation stories in Genesis Augustine locates the union of man and woman squarely within this broader social framework:†31
Every human being is part of the human race, and human nature is a social entity (sociale quiddam), and has naturally the great benefit and power of friendship. For this reason God wished to produce all persons out of one, so that they would be held together in their social relationships not only by similarity of race, but also by the bond of kinship. The first natural bond of human society, therefore, is that of husband and wife.
Augustine envisions the first human couple as a paradigmatic expression of the original creative purpose of God to found a society of persons united in friendship. The creation of Eve from Adam's side, Augustine suggests, was intended precisely to symbolize the power of this union: "For those who walk together, and look ahead together to where they are walking, do so at each other's side." The result of this union is the bonding of society (connexio societatis) in its children. But even without sexual intimacy, Augustine argues, "there could have been between the two sexes a certain relationship of friendship and kinship where one is in charge and the other compliant."†32
Augustine's starting point is a significant one, for it grants to the marital relationship, and particularly to procreation, a pivotal place in God's providential plan. The "natural" tendency for human beings to bond together in community is rooted, as Augustine sees it, in the original bonding of Adam and Eve, a bonding that was originally as intimate as "one flesh" (see Gn 2:24). This original, natural bonding of Adam and Eve is replicated in the marital union of subsequent men and women. Sexual union (which Augustine regards as one aspect of a marital union, though not the most important one) then produces children, who make possible the further bonding of society. Procreation, therefore, in Augustine's view is the fruit of marriage that is most closely related to the original social purpose of God's creation. As such, it is in a certain way the primary good of marriage.†33
In The Excellence of Marriage, however, Augustine goes on to distinguish two additional "goods," both of which are related to the character of marriage as a social bond. In addition to procreation, there is the marital chastity of the couple, which Augustine often refers to as "fidelity" (fides). The concept of fides was an important one in the Roman understanding of marriage. While the term often referred specifically to sexual loyalty, it could also refer to the more general loyalty which a couple promised to each other in marriage. As Susan Treggiari, a distinguished authority on Roman marriage, has written: "This reciprocal loyalty and trust must be seen against the background of the general concept of fides so important in Roman life and thought. Reciprocal relationships such as those of patron and client or patron and freedman depended on good faith and moral obligation. The informal contract of marriage… was similarly based."†34
Augustine's discussion of the good of fidelity reflects the Roman model in several ways. On the one hand, fidelity or chastity refers to the commitment to have sexual relations only with one's spouse. As Augustine described it:†35
A breach of this duty of fidelity is called adultery, when, either because of the urge of one's own sensuality or by consenting to the other person's, one violates the marriage contract by sleeping with someone else. In this way there is a betrayal of trust, and even in base material matters trust is a spiritual good of great value, and so it certainly should be put ahead of bodily well-being, including even our material life.
Even when sexual relations between a married couple take place apart from the intention to produce children, Augustine argues, the fact that their union is a faithful one is one of the good features of marriage.
But Augustine also speaks of fidelity in another sense, as a positive duty to engage in sexual relations with one's spouse, especially when the partner is experiencing what Augustine would regard as inordinate sexual desire, that is, apart from the intention to procreate. As Augustine had taught previously in Sermon 354A, to have sex with one's spouse in order to support the other's weakness can be an act of charity: "Married people, therefore, not only owe each other fidelity in relation to sexual union for the sake of having children, which in this mortal state is the human race's first social union, but also in a certain way they owe each other a mutual service to relieve each other's weakness, and thereby avoid illicit unions."†36 Although the seeking of sexual relations out of lust is an excusable or venial sin (venialis culpa), in Augustine's view the granting of sexual relations to the weaker spouse is part of the duty of fidelity.†37
In addition to the good of procreation and the good of fidelity, Augustine speaks of yet a third good in marriage, that of the "sacrament" (sacramentum) in marriage. Augustine's discussion of the sacrament of marriage must be clearly distinguished from later Christian formulations.
By the late fourth century the church had only just begun to formalize its procedures for marriage, and the notion of the "seven sacraments" still lay many centuries in the future. But the Jovinianist controversy had forced Augustine to think seriously about the theological value of Christian marriage, and his response was to begin to crystalize the concept of the "sacramentality" of marriage.
Augustine's understanding of the sacrament in marriage is closely related to his interpretation of the New Testament texts of Jesus and Paul on divorce; it also is a direct development of his anti-Manichean arguments on behalf of the sexual morality of the Old Testament patriarchs and matriarchs. From the New Testament, especially from Matthew 19:3-9 (see Mt 5:31-32) and 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 (see Rom 7:2-3), Augustine derived the teaching that Christians were forbidden to divorce, "except because of fornication," and that, if a divorce did take place, the spouses were not to marry anyone else. In Matthew 19:3-9 Jesus had invoked the text of Genesis 2:24 (Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh). In Ephesians 5:31-32 Paul had cited the same text of Genesis and added the comment, This is a great mystery (magnum sacramentum), and I am applying it to Christ and the Church. It was natural, therefore, for Augustine to apply the language of sacramentum to the context of Matthew's invocation of Genesis, that is, to the matter of the indissolubility of marriage. The "sacrament" in Christian marriages refers to the sacred mystery or symbolic meaning that is found in the indissolubility of the marital relationship.
But Augustine was also aware, especially after his anti-Manichean writings, that Old
Testament marriages were neither monogamous nor indissoluble. In The Excellence of Marriage Augustine's understanding of the "sacrament" in marriage is also developed with a sensitivity to the problem of the different historical contexts of marriage in the Old and New
Testaments. Developing the idea that he presented in Answer to Faustus, a Manichean, Augustine argues that the "sacrament" in marriage refers to the different prophetic meanings of marriage in different phrases of salvation history. In the Old Testament the sacrament of the polygamous marriages of the patriarchs signified "the plurality of people who would be subject to God in all nations of the earth." By contrast, the sacramental marriages of Christians now reflect the character of an eschatological unity. As Augustine notes: "The sacrament of monogamous marriage of our time is a symbol that in the future we shall all be united and subject to God in the one heavenly city."†38 For Augustine, therefore, the "sacrament of marriage" was not a univocal concept. The sacred significance or sacrament of marriage for Christians was fundamentally different from the sacrament of marriage in the Old Testament, although both forms of marriage referred symbolically to events in salvation history.
The Jovinianist controversy provided Augustine with an important opportunity to develop and synthesize elements of a theology of marriage that had gradually begun to emerge in his earlier writings. The notion that Christian marriage entails the three "goods" of procreation, fidelity, and the sacramental bond became a staple of his teaching for the next thirty years of his life. The debate with Jovinian also required Augustine to give more sustained attention to the issue of celibacy and to define more precisely the reasons why celibacy could be regarded as superior to marriage. Here too the idea of the different phases of salvation history is central to Augustine's argument.
In the past, that is, before the coming of Christ, Augustine suggests, it was necessary for human beings to procreate in order to fill the earth. Particularly in the case of the Old
Testament saints, as we have already seen, such procreation was not only physically necessary, but it was also a prophetic sign. Therefore, the marriages of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Old Testament were conducted out of obedience to a divine command.†39
But in the present time, now that Christ has come and the world is full, Augustine argues, there is no longer the same need for human beings to marry and produce children.†40
Moreover, since there will always be an abundance of children owing to the problem of sexual promiscuity, Augustine suggests, Christians have no need to replenish the population, not even to produce other Christians. Therefore, citing the eschatological advice of Paul's First
Letter to the Corinthians, Augustine concludes that "at the present time the only ones who should marry are those who are unable to be continent, in accordance with that advice of the same Apostle: If they are unable to be continent, they should marry; for it is better to marry than to burn."†41
We are here at one of the more troubling points in Augustine's understanding of marriage and celibacy: the problem of sexual desire. Despite his own explicit teaching on the three goods of marriage, under the influence of Paul's discussion of marriage and celibacy in First
Corinthians Augustine could find no truly positive role for sexuality or procreation in the Christian dispensation. Despite the various goods that he believed were present in marriage, Augustine still regarded marriage primarily as a safety-net for those Christians who were too weak to control their sexual desires. Since procreation was no longer strictly necessary for Christians, Augustine could speak of sexual intercourse, even for the sake of children, as an opportunity to direct sensual desire towards the goal of procreation, so that "out of the evil of lust (ex malo libidinis) sexual union in marriage achieves something good."†42 Even though
Augustine regarded procreation as good, and even though he regarded marital fidelity and the sacramental bond as good, nevertheless he saw sexual desire as inevitably associated with the concupiscence or lust of the flesh.
Although Augustine did not dwell on the problem of sexual desire or concupiscence in The Excellence of Marriage, the subject was soon to occupy a significant place in his Literal
Meaning of Genesis. Augustine began this work immediately after the treatises on marriage and virginity in 401, although he did not complete it until 415.†43 It was probably inevitable that Augustine would turn back to the book of Genesis after his writings on marriage and sexuality. In the beginning of The Excellence of Marriage he had raised, but left unanswered, an important question regarding human sexuality and procreation: how would the human race have "increased and multiplied," if the first parents had not sinned? In his earlier writings on Genesis, Augustine had been inclined to stress the spiritual character of the original creation.
For example, in On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manicheans, Augustine had argued that the bodies of Adam and Eve (if they had bodies at all) were of a spiritual substance quite unlike ours today; there certainly was no sex or procreation in paradise.†44 In the opening chapters of The Excellence of Marriage Augustine had suggested tentatively that Adam and Eve might have reproduced sexually in paradise before the fall. Even here, however, he merely raised this as a possibility and declined to give a final interpretation.†45
By the time he composed the ninth book of his Literal Meaning of Genesis, sometime before the year 410, Augustine had abandoned his earlier ambivalence and concluded definitively that God had originally intended Adam and Eve to have a full bodily life and that this life would have included sex and procreation, even before the fall. The conclusion was to have great consequences for Augustine's understanding of marriage and for his understanding of sexual desire, especially after the fall. Placing the facts of sex all the way back into Eden served to ground the good of marital procreation ever more securely in the positive will of the creator. There was, however, a negative side to this development. For once Augustine began to think of Adam and Eve as genuinely physical persons, and not merely as disembodied spirits, he was inevitably led to conceive of their sin as likewise having effects not only on their spirits, but also on their bodies.
Immediately upon sinning, Augustine suggested, something happened to the bodies of Adam and Eve. As soon as they disobeyed God's command, "their bodies contracted, as it were, the deadly disease of death, and this changed the gift by which they had ruled the body so perfectly that they would not say, I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind."†46 Sin introduced into their bodies a disordered motion, that is, the "concupiscence of the flesh," a tendency for sexual desire to run contrary to the conscious control of the mind and will. It was the presence of this new disruption in their flesh, Augustine suggests, that caused Adam and Eve to experience shame at their nakedness: "Casting their eyes on their bodies, they felt a movement of concupiscence which they had not known previously."†47
Although the "original sin" did not involve sexual relations in any way, Augustine argues, the effects of the sin were felt directly in the "bestial motion" in their bodily members; that is, Adam and Eve began to feel "the same drive by which there is in animals a desire to copulate and thus to provide for offspring to take the place of those that die."†48
The step Augustine took in his Literal Meaning of Genesis was to be a fateful one for all his subsequent writings on marriage and sexuality. From this point onward there is an irrevocable connection in his thought between human sexual desire and original sin. Augustine still sees sexual relations and procreation as good things. But starting with the Literal Meaning of Genesis, Augustine began to draw a sharp distinction between the original character of human sexuality (that is, before the fall) and the current character of sexuality (that is, after the fall).
Before their sin, Augustine writes, Adam and Eve could have enjoyed sex, though "without the tumultuous ardor of lust."†49 Their bodies would have operated in full harmony with their minds and wills, just as legs do for walking.†50 Adam and Eve could have commanded their genitals to function "without any trouble and without any itch for pleasure."†51 But this idyllic harmony and unity of human faculties that characterized the state of Adam and Eve before the fall has now been lost. While sexual activity and procreation are not themselves evil, the manner in which sexual desire now impinges on the mind is a sure sign of the "revolt of their disobedient members" which followed upon Adam and Eve's revolt against God.†52
By the time Augustine completed Book Nine of the Literal Meaning of Genesis sometime before 410, the stage was already set for the last great conflict of his theological career: the Pelagian debate. His notion that the sin of Adam and Eve has infected all people with the disorder of concupiscence will not change in any substantial way over the next two decades.
Such a view, however, was certain to arouse opposition from those, like the Pelagians, who maintained the basic goodness and integrity of human nature. While it is beyond the scope of this introduction to chart fully Augustine's discussion of marriage and celibacy in the Pelagian controversy, it will perhaps be helpful to indicate the manner in which Augustine's ideas on human sexuality became increasingly controversial during the final decades of his life.
The Pelagian Controversy (410-430)
The final three writings in this volume date from the years of the Pelagian controversy, although none of them is concerned exclusively with Pelagianism. The Excellence of Widowhood (414) is a letter of exhortation and spiritual direction addressed to a distinguished
Roman widow, whom Augustine (rightly) suspected of harboring sympathy for Pelagius. The letter was written early in the controversy, and Augustine restricted his anti-Pelagian remarks to a few paragraphs emphasizing the importance of grace in the pursuit of an ascetic vocation. The treatise
Adulterous Marriages (419-420) was written directly in response to a set of questions about the New Testament texts on divorce and remarriage and it bears no relationship with the Pelagian debate. Only the sermon Continence, which probably dates from the years 418-420, deals extensively with anti-Pelagian ideas.†53 Even in this work, however, the polemic is indirect and not addressed explicitly against Pelagius or his followers.
We must look elsewhere, therefore, for evidence of Pelagian opposition to Augustine's teaching on sexuality and sin and for Augustine's response to Pelagianism. As early as 412 in his first writing against Pelagianism, The Merits and Forgiveness of Sins and the Baptism of Infants, Augustine shows an awareness that his teaching on the inherited character of concupiscence is likely to draw fire from Christians who believe in the goodness of human nature. He notes that they (the Pelagians) should not use the goodness of marriage to deny original sin. Referring to his previous writings, The Excellence of Marriage and Holy
Virginity, Augustine notes that marriage involves the good use of a bad thing, that is, the concupiscence of the flesh. No one who is born is born apart from sin, except for Christ, who was conceived apart from the concupiscence of the flesh.†54
Somewhat later Augustine began to speak at length about marriage in his defense of the doctrine of original sin. In The Grace of Christ and Original Sin, composed in 418 shortly after the papal condemnation of Pelagius, Augustine indicated that Pelagian critics had begun to suggest that his doctrine of original sin made marriage into something evil and implied that human beings were not the creation of God.†55 Later that year, or early in 419, Augustine again took up the topic in the first book of Marriage and Desire. This work was explicitly written to counter the Pelagian accusation that Augustine condemned marriage and sexual union. Within a year or two (419-420), Julian of Eclanum, a bishop from southern Italy who had refused to subscribe to the papal condemnation of Pelagius, took the criticism one step further. Writing in response to the first book of Augustine's Marriage and Desire, Julian argued that Augustine's teaching on original sin, and specifically his view of sexual concupiscence as affected by the fall, was in fact Manichean.†56
From this point onward, in the second book of Marriage and Desire (420), Answer to the Two
Letters of the Pelagians (419/420), Answer to Julian (421), and the Unfinished Work in Answer to Julian (430), Augustine continually returned to Julian's accusation and attempted to distinguish his own teaching from that of the Manichees. The basis of Julian's position was the doctrine of the goodness of creation. Sexual desire, Julian argued, was a creation of God; it was an innocent and necessary drive required for the propagation of the human race.†57
Human beings today are born into a state that is essentially the same as that of Adam and Eve before the fall. For Julian, there can be no inherited sin and no inherited guilt without compromising the goodness of creation. Augustine's teaching on the transmission of sin and guilt by means of sexual intercourse and his position on the corruption of sexual desire appeared to Julian as nothing other than a return to the Manichean teaching of Augustine's youth.
For his part, Augustine persistently attempted to distinguish his own teaching from that of the Manichees, arguing that it was possible to maintain the goodness of creation, while at the same time asserting that creation was damaged by human sin. As Augustine saw it, the rebellious and unruly character of sexual desire indicates clearly that human nature no longer experiences the privileges enjoyed by the first human beings in paradise. Had human beings originally been subject to the kind of impulses that they now experience, there would have been neither peace nor freedom in paradise. As he stated in a letter to Bishop Atticus of Constantinople, written around 421 in defense of his teaching against the Pelagians: "If, therefore, this concupiscence of the flesh did exist in paradise, so that children were born through it to fulfill the blessing of marriage by increasing the human race, it certainly could not have been what it is now, that is, a thing whose impulses lust after licit and illicit objects indiscriminately."†58
In the writings from the final decades of his career Augustine displays a vivid sense of the persistence of sexual concupiscence and a palpable longing for the peace that will characterize the blessed life of the saints in heaven. As he wrote in the same letter to Bishop Atticus: Concupiscence insinuates itself where it is not needed, and by its troublesome and even wicked desires it agitates even the hearts of the faithful and the saints. Even if we resist it and refuse to yield to its disturbing impulses with any conscious assent, we would still prefer by a holier desire that these impulses not be present in us at all, if it were possible; indeed, someday this will happen.†59
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Augustine's own experience with the difficulty of resisting sexual desire, described so poignantly in the Confessions, continued to exert a profound influence on his understanding of human nature particularly as vitiated by original sin. While his teaching on the three goods of marriage—procreation, fidelity, and sacrament— remained constant, Augustine's own struggle with the reality of concupiscence continued to shape his understanding of human sinfulness and, therefore, his view of human sexuality.
Abbreviations
BA Bibliothèque Augustinienne
CCL Corpus Christianorum Latinorum
CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
NPNF Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
PL Patrologia Latina
PLS Patrologia Latina Supplementum
Notes
A similar arrangement of material is employed by Elizabeth A. Clark in her collection, St.
Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality (Selections from the Fathers of the Church, 1; Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996).
See, for example, the struggle described in Confessions VIII, 7, 16–11, 27, and Augustine's famous prayer that God would grant him chastity and continence "but not yet" (VII, 7, 17).
See Confessions VIII, 12, 30: "Many years earlier you had shown her [Monica] a vision of me standing on the rule of faith; and now indeed I stood there, no longer seeking a wife, or entertaining any worldly hope, for you had converted me to yourself"; tr. M. Boulding, The Confessions of Saint Augustine (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1996) 208. For a compelling account of the moral and intellectual influences on Augustine's conversion and the development of his ideas on sexuality, see Peter Brown, The Body and Society. Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988)
387-447.
†4 Soliloquies I, 10, 17: PL 32, 878; translated by T. F. Gilligan (Fathers of the Church; New
York: CIMA, 1948), 365-366. In Confessions VI, 12, 21-22 Augustine reports that prior to his conversion he and his friend Alypius discussed the possibility of living the life of a philosopher while married. At that time it was Alypius who had discouraged him from marrying, while Augustine cited the example of married men who had continued to cultivate wisdom and to please God.
†5 Brown, Body and Society, 394.
On procreation, see Confessions IV, 2, 2; VI, 12, 22. See II, 2, 3, where Augustine indicates that his parents should have arranged a marriage for him: "Some bounds might have been set to my pleasures if only the stormy surge of my adolescence had flung me up onto the shore of matrimony"; tr. Boulding, 63.
The Manichean Way of Life II, 18, 65; cf. Augustine, Heresies 47. An excellent introduction to Manicheism can be found in Samuel N. C. Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later
Roman Empire and Medieval China. 2nd Edition, Revised and Expanded (Tübingen: J. C. B.
Mohr, 1992).
†8 The Catholic Way of Life I, 35, 79.
†9 Answer to Adimantus III, 1-3; quotation at III, 3 (BA 17, 231).
†10 Revisions II, 7 (33) (CCL 57, 95-96).
†11 Answer to Faustus, a Manichean XXII, 5.
†12 Answer to Faustus, a Manichean XXII, 27.
Ibid. XXII, 30. In XXII, 47 Augustine offered a similar explanation for the polygamy of the patriarch Jacob. Polygamy violates no law of nature, but only custom and legal practice.
Since the custom and legal practice of Jacob's day did not forbid polygamy, and since Jacob had intercourse with his four wives only for the procreation of children, his conduct in Augustine's view was conformable both to human and divine law. A similar point about the relativity of moral codes is made in Confessions III, 7, 13–8, 15.
†14 Answer to Faustus, a Manichean XXII, 24.
†15 Answer to Faustus, a Manichean XXII, 38.
†16 Answer to Secundinus 2 (BA 17, 616).
Instruction of Beginners 19, 33, tr. by J. P. Christopher (Ancient Christian Writers, 2; Westminster: Newman Press, 1962) 63.
†18 The Lord's Sermon on the Mount I, 14, 39: CCL 35, 41-42.
The Lord's Sermon on the Mount I, 16, 43-47: CCL 35, 47-53. Augustine later expressed some reservations about this conclusion; see Revisions I, 19(18), 6: CCL 57, 58.
Sermon 354A=Dolbeau 12=Mainz 41. English translation by Edmund Hill, Sermons
III/1. Newly Discovered Sermons. The Works of Saint Augustine. A Translation for the 21st
Century (Hyde Park: New City Press, 1997), 322-330.
†21 Sermon 354A, 3.
†22 Sermon 354A, 4.
†23 Sermon 354A, 8-9.
†24 Sermon 354A, 7.
†25 Revisions II, 22(48), 1: CCL 57, 107.
†26 Jerome, Against Jovinian I, 3: PL 23, 224.
The most recent book-length study of Jovinian is that of Francesco Valli, Gioviniano.
Esame delle fonti e dei frammenti (Urbino: Università di Urbino, 1953). See also David G.
Hunter, "Resistance to the Virginal Ideal in Late-Fourth-Century Rome: The Case of Jovinian," Theological Studies 48 (1987) 45-64; and "Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary in Late Fourth-Century Rome," Journal of Early Christian Studies 1 (1993) 47-71.
Siricius, Letter 7: PL 13, 1168-1172; Ambrose, Letter 42: PL 16, 1123-1129; Jerome, Against Jovinian I, 1: PL 23, 221; Codex Theodosianus XVI, 5, 53.
Revisions II, 22(48), 1: CCSL 57, 108; tr. M. I. Bogan, Saint Augustine. The Retractations (Fathers of the Church 60; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America
Press, 1968) 164.
See Jerome, Letters 48-49 to Pammachius and Letter 50 to Domnio; all three letters were written by Jerome to defend his treatise Against Jovinian.
†31 The Excellence of Marriage 1, 1.
Ibid. In 3, 3 Augustine refers to a "natural sociability" (naturalem… societatem) that exists between the sexes within a good marriage regardless of the couple's sexual relationship.
In The Excellence of Marriage 19. 22 Augustine notes that the desire or instinct for reproduction is a natural good created by God. The evidence of this is that animals also have a natural inclination to produce and care for their young.
Roman Marriage. Iusti Coniuges From the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) 237. In The Excellence of Marriage 4, 4 Augustine illustrates the value of fidelity with an example from social relations.
†35 The Excellence of Marriage 4, 4.
†36 The Excellence of Marriage 6, 6.
†37 The Excellence of Marriage 10, 11–11, 12.
†38 The Excellence of Marriage 18, 21.
The Excellence of Marriage 13, 15, among many other places.
†40 The Excellence of Marriage 9, 9.
The Excellence of Marriage 10, 10, citing 1 Cor 7:9. See Holy Virginity 1, 1.
†42 The Excellence of Marriage 3, 3.
Revisions II, 24(50). For a discussion of the dating of the various books of the Ibid., see the introduction by P. Agaësse and A. Solignac in BA 48, 25-31.
See Augustine's comments on his earlier views in Literal Meaning of Genesis VIII, 2, 5.
On the development of Augustine's exegesis of Genesis, see the excellent study by Elizabeth A. Clark, "Heresy, Asceticism, Adam and Eve: Interpretations of Gen 1-3 in the Later Latin Fathers," in her Ascetic Piety and Women's Faith. Essays on Late Ancient
Christianity (Lewiston/Queenston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986) 353-385.
Literal Meaning of Genesis IX, 10, 17 (BA 49, 112); translated by John Hammond Taylor, St. Augustine. The Literal Meaning of Genesis (ACW 42; New York: Newman Press, 1982)
†47 Ibid. XI, 31, 41 (BA 49, 298).
†48 Ibid. XI, 32, 42 (BA 49, 300).
†49 Ibid. IX, 3, 6 (BA 49, 96).
†50 Ibid. IX, 4, 8.
†51 Ibid. IX, 10, 18.
†52 Ibid. XI, 1, 3.
See the full discussion in Michael R. Rackett, "Anti-Pelagian Polemic in Augustine's De
Continentia," Augustinian Studies 26 (1965) 25-50.
The Merits and Forgiveness of Sins and the Baptism of Infants I, 29, 57; see II, 4, 4. A good overview of the texts on marriage in the Pelagian controversy can be found in Émile
Schmitt, Le mariage chrétien dans l'oeuvre de saint Augustin (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1983), 49-62.
†55 The Grace of Christ and Original Sin II, 33, 38.
†56 Marriage and Desire II, 3, 7; II, 19, 34.
†57 See, for example, Marriage and Desire II, 7, 17.
Letter 6*, 8; translated by David G. Hunter, Marriage in the Early Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992) 126-127.
Letter 6*, 7; tr. Hunter, 125
Marriage and Virginity
THE EXCELLENCE OF MARRIAGE
Introduction
The Excellence of Marriage dates from around the year 401. In his Revisions Augustine says that he wrote it in response to the controversy surrounding the monk Jovinian:†1
The heresy of Jovinian, by equating the merit of consecrated virgins and conjugal continence, was so influential in the city of Rome that even some nuns, about whose incontinence there had been no suspicion heretofore, were precipitated into marriage, it was said, especially by the following argument: he kept urging them saying: "Are you, then, better than Sarah, better than Susanna or Anna?" and by mentioning other women, highly praised according to the testimony of Holy Scripture, to whom they could not think themselves superior or even equal.
In this way, too, he shattered the holy celibacy of holy men by reminding them of and comparing them with fathers and husbands.
Despite condemnations by a Roman synod called by Pope Siricius (about 393) and another at Milan under Ambrose, the teachings of Jovinian continued to spread. The followers of Jovinian, according to Augustine, boasted "that Jovinian could not be answered by praising marriage, but only by censuring it." For this reason, Augustine says, he composed The Excellence of Marriage.†2
Jovinian was one of many Christians in the later fourth century who expressed reservations about the tide of asceticism which was then sweeping through the Roman world. Although
Jovinian himself was a monk committed to the celibate life, he regarded the notion that celibacy was superior to marriage as implying an unduly negative (even "Manichean") view of sexuality. Jovinian was also concerned about the way in which asceticism was creating divisions within the Church. "Be not proud," Jovinian warned consecrated virgins. "You and your married sisters are members of the same Church."†3 All baptized Christians, he argued, share equally in the holiness of the Church, the bride of Christ. Therefore, distinctions in merit based on celibacy, fasting or other forms of asceticism are irrelevant in determining a Christian's ultimate holiness.†4
Augustine's reference to previous, unsuccessful attempts to refute Jovinian is a thinly veiled allusion to the notorious treatise of Jerome, Against Jovinian. Although Jerome had left Rome for Bethlehem sometime before Jovinian's activity there, he had received copies of Jovinian's writings from Roman friends.†5 Jerome's response to Jovinian, however, was so excessively negative in its rhetoric that it was widely regarded as an attack on marriage. Even Jerome's friends at Rome were embarrassed: the aristocrat Pammachius, who, according to Jerome, had been instrumental in the condemnation of Jovinian, tried to withdraw copies of Against Jovinian from circulation.†6 Another friend, the priest Domnio, sent excerpts of the most offensive passages of Against Jovinian to Jerome demanding clarification. Domnio also told Jerome that there were Christians at Rome, who were deeply sympathetic to the ascetic life and opposed to Jovinian's ideas, but who nonetheless found Jerome's treatise dangerously close to a "Manichean" rejection of marriage.†7
Augustine's treatise, The Excellence of Marriage, is an attempt to steer a middle course between Jovinian's view that celibacy and marriage are equally holy states of life and Jerome's denigration of marriage. Against Jovinian, Augustine argues that in the Christian era celibacy is now the way to spiritual perfection and superior to the married life.†8 Against Jerome, however, and against those heretics such as the Manichees, who regarded sex and marriage as something evil, Augustine clearly delineates a variety of "goods" in Christian marriage. In The Excellence of Marriage Augustine articulated the idea of the three goods of marriage that was to become classic in Catholic moral theology: offspring (proles), mutual fidelity (fides), and the sacramental bond (sacramentum).
The original and primary good of marriage, according to Augustine, is the procreation of children. Although at the time of writing The Excellence of Marriage Augustine had not yet made up his mind on the question of how the human race might have reproduced at the very beginning of creation (that is, before the sin of Adam and Eve), he was convinced that "in that condition of being born and dying with which we are acquainted, and in which we were created, the union of man and woman is something of value."†9 Marriage is the "first natural bond of human society" (1, 1), and the producing of children is "the first social union of the human race" (6, 6). Precisely because human nature is social, Augustine argues, God arranged for human beings to be connected to one another not only as members of the same species, but also by the bonds of physical kinship (1, 1).
The second good of marriage that Augustine discusses is the mutual fidelity of spouses. In The Excellence of Marriage fidelity has several dimensions. It includes, of course, the basic duty of each spouse to abstain from adultery. But fidelity also involves the married person's responsibility to have sex with his or her partner in order to help the other to refrain from adultery; this, Augustine argues, is the fidelity commanded by the apostle Paul in 1
Corinthians 7:4 (4, 4). Augustine describes fidelity as "a mutual service to relieve each other's weakness, and thereby avoid illicit unions" (6, 6). Augustine argues that it is no sin to have sex with one's partner for this reason, even apart from the intention to procreate. The married person who seeks sexual relations out of excessive desire ("the concupiscence of the flesh") commits a sin that is forgivable; but fidelity itself, like procreation, is one of the true goods of marriage (11, 12).
The third good of marriage that Augustine discusses is what he calls its sacramentum, that is, its significance as a sacred sign or symbol. Augustine is among the very first to articulate the notion of the sacramentality of Christian marriage, which to him means its character as a union that is both monogamous and indissoluble until the death of one of the spouses (15, 17).
For Augustine the sacramentality of marriage is directly linked to its role in the history of salvation. In the Old Testament marriages were neither monogamous nor indissoluble, and yet they possessed their own unique kind of sacramentality; their very multiplicity, Augustine suggests, sacramentally signified the many churches that would one day be subject to Christ.
But now, after the coming of Christ, Christian marriage bears a different "sacrament," that is, a different sacred meaning: "Therefore, just as the sacrament of polygamous marriages of that age was a symbol of the plurality of people who would be subject to God in all nations of the earth, so too the sacrament of monogamous marriage of our time is a symbol that in the future we shall all be united and subject to God in the one heavenly city" (18, 21).
The question of the sacramentality of marriage in different phases of salvation history is directly linked to another topic which Augustine discusses extensively in The Excellence of Marriage, namely the sexual mores of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Old Testament.
Jovinian had used the example of the holy married men and women of the Old Testament to argue on behalf of the sanctity of marriage. Augustine shared Jovinian's positive estimation of the Hebrew matriarchs and patriarchs; indeed, in his earlier writings against the Manichees
Augustine had defended the goodness of their sexual activity (even their polygamy) in the face of Manichean criticism.†10 But against Jovinian Augustine had to show that marriage and procreation no longer have the same significance or value for Christians as they once did for the Old Testament saints. He does so by locating the different marriages in different phases of salvation history.
The Old Testament saints lived at a time when procreation was still necessary in order to produce the human line of descent that would lead to Christ. Although they were quite capable of celibacy, Augustine argues, the patriarchs and matriarchs married and produced children out of piety in obedience to God's command (16, 18; see 22, 27). But in the present era of history, since procreation is no longer necessary, the only reason to have children is out of a lack of self-control (17, 19). For this reason, according to Augustine, marriages among
Christians can never attain the same moral value as the marriages of the Old Testament saints.
Nevertheless, Augustine insists, Christians who practice celibacy, while they are embracing a greater good than married persons, are not necessarily superior, as individuals, to married persons. A virgin who lacks the more important virtue of obedience, for example, will be inferior to an obedient married woman (23, 30). Celibate Christians must also remember that it may take greater virtue to make use of the goods of the world without becoming attached to them, than not to use them at all. In this respect, the Old Testament saints, such as Abraham, who married and had children, but who were ready to give up their children at God's command, were superior to many Christians who abstain from marriage altogether (23, 31).
It is clear from such arguments that Augustine, like Jovinian, was concerned about the problem of ascetic elitism in the Church. To be sure, Augustine rejected Jovinian's view that no distinction could be made between the holiness of marriage and that of celibacy; he steadfastly maintained the superiority of the celibate life. Nevertheless, Augustine's arguments in The Excellence of Marriage do much to undercut the grounds on which celibate Christians could claim to be superior to married ones. Moreover, against Jerome and any others whose enthusiasm for celibacy tended to degrade the married life, Augustine's development of the three-fold good of marriage—offspring, fidelity, and sacrament—was to establish ever more securely in the Christian tradition the value and sanctity of Christian marriage.
Notes
†1 Revisions II, 22 (48), 1: CCL 57, 107-108.
†3 Cited in Jerome, Against Jovinian I, 5: PL 23, 228.
For a recent attempt to understand the perspective of Jovinian, see David G. Hunter, "Resistance to the Virginal Ideal in Late-Fourth-Century Rome," Theological Studies 48 (1987) 45-64; and "Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary in Late Fourth-Century
Rome," Journal of Early Christian Studies 1 (1993) 47-71.
†5 Against Jovinian II, 1.
†6 Jerome, Letter 48, 2.
Jerome, Letter 50, 2. One of these anonymous opponents of both Jovinian and Jerome may have been the young monk Pelagius. See the discussion in B.R. Rees, Pelagius. A Reluctant
Heretic (Rochester: The Boydell Press, 1988), 4-5.
†8 The Excellence of Marriage 17, 19; 22, 27—23, 31.
The Excellence of Marriage 3, 3. The question of the original nature of procreation and the original meaning of God's command to "increase and multiply" is raised by Augustine in 2, 2, but left unanswered. On the significance of this question for Augustine's developing theology of marriage, see the General Introduction, 20-21.
†10 See General Introduction, 11-13.
The Excellence of Marriage
Marriage: The First Bond of Society
1, 1. Every human being is part of the human race, and human nature is a social entity, and has naturally the great benefit and power of friendship. For this reason God wished to produce all persons out of one, so that they would be held together in their social relationships not only by similarity of race, but also by the bond of kinship. The first natural bond of human society, therefore, is that of husband and wife.†1 God did not create them as separate individuals and bring them together as persons of a different race, but he created one from the other, making the side, from which the woman was taken and formed,†2 a sign of the strength of their union.
For those who walk together, and look ahead together to where they are walking, do so at each other's side. The result is the bonding of society in its children, and this is the one honorable fruit, not of the union of husband and wife, but of their sexual conjunction. For even without that kind of intimacy, there could have been between the two sexes a certain relationship of friendship and kinship where one is in charge and the other compliant.
Human Procreation Before the Fall
2, 2. There is no need at present for us to investigate, and offer a definite opinion on the question, how could there have been descendants of the first human beings, if they had not sinned? God had blessed them with the words, Increase and multiply and fill the earth (Gn
1:28), but it was by sinning that their bodies incurred mortality, and sexual union is possible only for mortal bodies. Many different opinions have been held on this topic; and if we had to consider which of them accords best with the truth of the divine scriptures, it would be a task requiring long drawn-out discussion.†3 Was it then that if they had not sinned, they were destined to have children in some other way, without physical union, as a favor from the allpowerful Creator? He was able to produce the first human beings without parents, and was able to form Christ's flesh in the womb of a virgin, and (to address myself even to the unbelievers) he was able to give offspring to the bees without any sexual union. Or is it that in that passage many things were said in a mystical and figurative sense, and the text, Fill the earth and rule over it (Gn 1:28), has to be understood differently, in such a way, namely, that it would be fulfilled by there being abundance and perfection of life and power, and so the increase and multiplication of the words, Increase and multiply, is also understood in terms of development of mind and resources of spiritual strength, as in the words of the psalm, You will make me grow strong in my soul (Ps 138:3)?†4 That continuation by having descendants would be accorded to mankind only after sin brought it about that there would be the passing away by death. Or is it that the body made for those persons was at first a material one, so that as the reward for obedience it would later become spiritual in order to acquire immortality without first dying? Death came into the world through the devil's hatred (Wis 2:24), and it became the punishment for sin. The body would become spiritual, however, through that change which the apostle refers to when he says: Then those of us who are still living will be taken up in the clouds together with them, to meet