Tractates on the Gospel of John
TRACTATE 9 195 vestigate what every one of them means, that is, what they signify. For, as you recall, we put off until today the significance of all these things.
2. The fact that the Lord was invited and came to the wedding, without even considering the mystical meaning, was meant to affirm what he himself created.^ For there were going to be those, about whom the Apostle spoke,^ who would forbid marriage and say that marriage is an evil and that the devil created it,"^ although the same Lord in the gospel, when asked whether a man is allowed to divorce his wife for any reason, replied that he is not allowed except in the case of fornication.*^ And in his answer, if you remember, he said this: "What God has Joined together, let not man put asunder."^ (2) And they who have been well instructed in the Catholic faith know that God created marriage, and as the union is from God, so divorce is from the devil. But one is allowed to divorce a wife in case of fornication for the precise reason that she first did not wish to be a wife who has not preserved conjugal fidelity to her husband. Nor are those women who vow virginity to God, although they have a higher level of honor and holiness in the Church, without marriage; for they too, together with the whole Church, belong to the marriage in which Christ is the bridegroom.
(3) And, therefore, for this reason the Lord was invited and
3. Some editors, following the Maurist edition of 1680, read here quod ipse fecit nuptias, "that he himself created marriage."
4. Cf. 1 Tm 4.1—3. 5. Augustine probably has in mind the Manichaeans who see the human body as a prison which entraps that particle of light which is the soul and prevents its reunion with God who is light. Thus they disapprove of marriage since its goal of procreating children assists the devil, who is darkness and evil, in the entrapment of souls in material bodies. See De Haeresibus 46.13 (CCL46.317); Berrouard, Homelies I-XVI, 896-898; Decret, 295-296, 301302; and Widengren, 97. Various Christian Gnostic sects held the same view of marriage. The Encratites, whom Augustine also calls the Tatiani, and those called the Apostolici were Christian heretics who prohibited marriage. See De Haeresibus 25 and 40 (CCL 46.301 and 307).
6. Cf. Mt 19.3-9; 10.2-12; Lk 16.18. 7. Cf. Mt 19.6; Mk 10.9.