14. See Gn 5:21-24.
Book IX 381 would also have been possible for human beings, after breeding children and justly carrying out their duties, to be transferred to better things by some kind of change other than death. This could either be that supreme change by which on getting back their bodies10 they will become like the angels in heaven (Mt 22:30); or else, ifthis may only be properly granted to all mankind together at the end of the world, it would be by some kind of lesser change, which for all that would still bring about a better condition than either this body has, or even the bodies of the two who were created at the beginning, the man' s from the mud of the earth, the woman's from the man's flesh.
1 1 . Elijah, you see, is not to be reckoned as already being like what the saints will be when, the work of the day being done, they will all equally receive the wage of a tenner, 1 1 nor on the other hand like people who have not yet departed this life, from which he did still depart, not by death but by special conveyance. 12 And so he already enjoys something better than he could have done in this life, although he does not yet enjoy what he is going to do at the end in consequence ofa life well lived here. For they were looking forward to better things for us, lest they should be perfected without us being perfected too.13
Or if you suppose that Elijah could not have earned such a blessing if he had married a wife and begotten children—he is believed not to have had one because scripture did not say he did, although for that matter it did not say anything about his being celibate either—what reply will you give about Enoch, who pleased God after having had children, and did not die, but was conveyed away?14 So then, if Adam and Eve had lived justly and had chastely begotten children, why could they not have made room for these to succeed them, not by dying but by being conveyed away?
10. 1n the case he has in mind they would not have lost their bodies, because they would not have died; but he is of course thinking of the resurrection of the dead, to which we now look forward, achieving the effect which would have been granted to them, without their having to die first.
1 1. See Mt 20: 1-16, the parable of the workers in the vineyard, in which all received a denarius; a penny in the old translations, because that is what a denarius became. But it was a coin which was worth ten even smaller coins, and much is often made by Augustine of its derivation from the number 1 0; so "tenner," even though colloquial, seems to be the best modern equivalent. 12. See2Kgs2:11. 13. "They" are the saints of the Old Testament of whose faith we are reminded in Heb 11. Augustine is here alluding, very freely from a slightly inaccurate memory, to verses 39 and 40 of that chapter. His final clause reads ne sine nobis perfecti perficerentur—"lest being perfected they should be perfected without us." 1 have presumed to emendperfecti to perfectis, to agree with nobis. Neither form is in the actual text of Hebrews. 14. See Gn 5:21-24.
382 The Literal Meaning of Genesis
Why set aside the reason ofhaving children? A comparison of the values of marriage and virginity
7, 1 2. And so I do not see what other help a wife was made to provide the man with, if you set aside the reason of having children; why in any case you should set it aside I cannot imagine. It is true that faithful and religious virginity now earns the great reward of being greatly honored by God; but that is only because in this present time to refrain from embracing (Eccl 3:5), when the abundant supply of people from all nations is amply sufficient for filling up the number of the saints, the lust for indulging sordid pleasure cannot claim for itself what the necessity of supplying offspring no longer requires. And then the weakness of either sex tilting them towards collapse into shameful behavior is shored up by the honorable state of marriage, so that what could be just a duty for the healthy can be a remedy for the sick.
l mean, just because immoderate sexual activity is an evil, it does not follow that marriage, even between over-sexed persons, is not a good. Quite the contrary; not only does that evil not make this good blameworthy, this good makes that evil pardonable, since what is good in marriage can never be a sin. This good, in fact, is threefold: fidelity, offspring, sacrament.15 What fidelity means is that neither partner should sleep with another person outside the marriage bond; offspring means that children should be welcomed with love, brought up with kindness, given a religious education; sacrament means that the union should not be broken up, and that if either husband or wife is sent away, neither should marry another even for the sake of having children. This is, so to say, the set-square of marriage, good either for embellishing the fertility of nature, or putting straight the crookedness of lust.
But l have discussed all this sufficiently in the book which I recently published on The Good of Marriage, where l also compared with it the self-denial of widowhood and the pre-eminence of virginity; so there is no need to keep my pen busy with it any further here.
1 5 . The famous trio of the goods, or ends of marriage:/?<fes, proles, sacramentum. That is the order he puts them in here; but in the little work he goes on to mention, The Excellence ofMarriage 32, he puts them in the order that comes to dominate the tradition,proles, fides, sacramentum, offspring being seen as the primary end of marriage, and of sexual activity within marriage. 1t is only since Vatican 11 that in official teaching the goods or ends of marriage have been given parity of value.
Book IX 383
A bad reasonfor supposing that they would not have been allowed to mate in Paradise
8. 1 3. Now, you see, we must ask what help the woman would have been made to provide the man with, if they had not been allowed to mate in Paradise. People who hold this opinion may perhaps assume that all sexual intercourse is sinful. lt is indeed difficult for people who shun one set of vices for the wrong reasons not to fall promptly into the contrary set. Thus someone horrified by miserliness becomes a spendthrift, horrified by extravagance becomes a miser; you reprove him for indolence, he becomes restless; for restlessness he becomes indolent; on being reproved for daredevilry he begins to hate it, and takes refuge in timidity, or in his effort not to be timid he so to say bursts his chains and abruptly behaves rashly. This happens when people assess wrongdoing by opinion, not by reason. In the same sort ofway, when they are ignorant ofwhat it is in adultery and forni cation that is condemned by divine law, they execrate conjugal intercourse even for the sake of procreation.
Another misapprehension on the point
9. 14. There are others who do not make this mistake, but who still feel that God bestowed fertility on the flesh just to provide mortal creatures with succes sors; and they too think that those first human beings could not have mated if they had not been going to die on account of the sin they had committed, and had not thus needed to provide themselves with successors by begetting them. But they fail to observe that if successors could properly be sought for those who were going to die, with much more propriety could companions and community have been sought for those who were going to go on living. Once the earth was filled, you see, by the human race, it would be quite right for offspring only to be sought in order to take the place of those who were going to die; but for the earth to be filled through just two human beings—how could they possibly fulfill this social duty except by having children?
Or can anyone be so intellectually blind as not to perceive what an ornament to all lands the human race is, even when only a few of its members live straight and laudable lives, and what value public order has in restraining even sinners with the bonds of a kind of earthly peace? Even the most crooked and depraved human beings, after all, still rank in value above cattle and birds. And yet can anybody fail to take pleasure in considering how this lower part of the universe is embellished with all the various species of fauna allotted to each region? Could anyone on the other hand be so crass as to suppose that the world would have been less beautifully furnished if it were filled with just and upright men and women who did not die?