On Adulterous Marriages 1.17–2.1

But what the difference is between what is unlawful and therefore not expedient, and what is lawful and yet not expedient, is hard to define by any universal rule. For someone might quickly say: “Everything that is not expedient to do is a sin; and every sin is unlawful; therefore everything that is not expedient is unlawful.” And where will those things be which the apostle said are lawful but not expedient, if everything that is not expedient is not lawful? Therefore, since we cannot doubt that the apostle spoke the truth, and we dare not say that some sins are lawful, it remains for us to say that something is done which is not expedient and yet, if it is lawful, is not a sin, although, since it is not expedient, it certainly should not be done. But if it seems absurd that something should be done which is not expedient and yet the one who did it should not be said to have sinned, it must be understood that this is absurd by the custom of speech, which extends so widely that we often say that even beasts of burden, though they lack reason, ought to be beaten when they sin. But to sin properly belongs only to one who uses the rational choice of the will, which among all mortal living things has been given by God to man alone. But it is one thing when we speak properly, another when we borrow words by transferring them from other things or by misusing them.

So that, then, we may try, if we can, to distinguish by some definite boundary between what is lawful and not expedient and what is not lawful and therefore not expedient either: those things seem to me lawful and not expedient which are indeed permitted by the righteousness that is before God, but are to be avoided because of the offense of people, lest they be hindered from salvation by it; but those things are not lawful and therefore not expedient which are so forbidden by righteousness itself that they are not to be done even if those to whose knowledge they have been brought praise them. If this is so, the Lord forbids only unlawful things, so that the things which are lawful and not expedient may be avoided, not by the bond of law, but by the free kindness of love.

Therefore, if it were not lawful to put away an unbelieving spouse, the Lord would forbid this to be done, and the apostle, when forbidding it, would not say, “I say, not the Lord.” For if a person is permitted to separate from a spouse because of fornication of the flesh, how much more is fornication of the mind in a spouse to be detested, that is, unbelief, of which it is written, “For behold, those who put themselves far from you shall perish; you have destroyed everyone who commits fornication away from you”! But because it is lawful in such a way that it is not expedient, lest people, offended by the separations of spouses, recoil from the very teaching of salvation by which unlawful things are forbidden, and so remain in the same unbelief, worse and about to perish, the apostle intervenes and by advice forbids what is lawful in such a way that it is not expedient. For believing men or women are not forbidden by the Lord to withdraw from unbelieving wives or husbands, yet neither are they commanded to. For if they were commanded to put away such spouses, there would be no room for the advice of the apostle warning them not to do it. For in no way would a good servant forbid what the Lord commands to be done.

For once the Lord commanded this through the prophet Ezra, and it was done: the Israelites put away their foreign wives, all who then had them, through whom it came about that they themselves were led astray to foreign gods, not that those women were won to the true God through their husbands. For so great a grace of the Savior had not yet shone forth, and the multitude of that people still gaped after the temporal promises of the Old Testament. And therefore, when they saw that the earthly goods which they sought from the Lord as something great also abounded for those who worshiped many false gods, through the blandishments of their wives they first feared to offend those gods, and then were led on to worship them too. That is why the Lord had commanded through holy Moses that no one should take a foreign wife. Rightly, then, they put away at the Lord's command those whom they had married against the Lord's prohibition. But when the gospel had begun to be preached to the gentiles, it found gentile spouses already joined to gentiles. Of these, if both did not believe, but one husband or one wife did, and the unbeliever consented to live with the believer, the believer ought neither to be forbidden by the Lord to put away the unbeliever nor to be commanded to: not forbidden, clearly, because righteousness permits departing from one who commits fornication, and the fornication of an unbelieving person is greater in the heart, nor can his chastity with his spouse be called true, since “everything that is not from faith is sin”; although the believer has true chastity even with an unbelieving spouse who does not have it. And believers ought not to have been commanded to separate from unbelievers because both gentiles were joined not against a command of the Lord.

Since, then, the Lord neither forbids nor commands a believer to depart from an unbeliever, the apostle says that the believer should not depart, “I, not the Lord”; he who of course had the Holy Spirit, in whom he could give useful and faithful counsel. Hence, when he had said of the woman whose husband has died, “But she will be happier if she remains as she is, according to my counsel,” so that no one would think this counsel was to be despised as human and not divine, he added, “And I think that I too have the Spirit of God.” Accordingly, it must be understood that even those things which are not commanded by the Lord, but usefully urged by his holy servant, are urged by the inspiration of the same Lord. For far be it that any Catholic should say that when the Holy Spirit urges, the Lord does not urge, since he too is the Lord and the works of the Trinity are inseparable. Yet he says, “Concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord, but I give counsel,” not so that we should think this counsel foreign to the Lord, since he immediately goes on to say, “as one who has obtained mercy from God to be faithful.” So he gives faithful counsel according to God in that Spirit of whom he says, “And I think that I too have the Spirit of God.”

Nevertheless, the command of the Lord who orders is one thing, and the faithful counsel of a fellow servant according to the mercy of charity, inspired and given to him by the Lord, is another. In the first case it is not permitted to do otherwise; in the second it is permitted, in such a way, to be sure, that what is permitted is sometimes expedient and sometimes not. It is expedient when it is not only permitted by the righteousness that is before the Lord but also puts no obstacle to salvation in anyone's way: as when the apostle gives virgins the counsel not to marry, for which he testifies that he has no command of the Lord, it is permitted to do otherwise, that is, to marry and hold the good of marriage, though less than that of continence. And this permitted thing is also expedient, since it has caught the weakness of the flesh, which would fall into forbidden and unlawful things, by the honorable state of marriage in such a way that it hinders no one from salvation; although it would be more expedient and more honorable if the virgin took up the counsel to which the command does not compel her. But what is permitted is not expedient when it is indeed allowed, but the use of that very right puts an obstacle to salvation in the way of others. Such is the matter we have long been discussing, the departure of a believing spouse from an unbelieving one, which the Lord does not forbid by a command of law, because it is not unjust before him, but which the apostle forbids by the counsel of charity, because it puts an obstacle to salvation in the way of unbelievers: not only because, offended, they are most harmfully scandalized, but also because, when they fall into other marriages while those who put them away are alive, they are bound in adulterous ties and are released only with great difficulty.

Therefore here, where what is permitted is not expedient, it cannot be said, “If he puts away the unbeliever, he does well; if he does not put her away, he does better,” as it was said, “He who gives her in marriage does well, and he who does not give her in marriage does better”; because there not only are both equally permitted (so that no one is compelled to either by a command of the Lord), but both are also expedient, the one less, the other more; so that whoever can receive it is invited by the apostle's counsel to what is more expedient. But here, where the question is of putting away or not putting away an unbelieving spouse, both are indeed equally permitted by the righteousness that is before the Lord, and therefore the Lord forbids neither; but both are not expedient, because of people's weaknesses, and therefore the apostle forbids what is not expedient, the Lord giving him free room to forbid it, since the Lord neither forbids what the apostle advises nor commands what the apostle forbids. If this were not so, the apostle would neither advise anything against the Lord's prohibition nor forbid anything against his command. Accordingly, in these two cases, one about marrying or not marrying, the other about putting away or not putting away an unbelieving spouse, there is something similar and something dissimilar in the apostle's words. It is similar that there he says, “I have no command of the Lord, but I give counsel,” and here he says, “I say, not the Lord.” For “I have no command of the Lord” is like “not the Lord,” and “I give counsel” is like “I say.” But it is dissimilar in that of marrying and not marrying it can be said that this is done well and that better, since both are expedient, the one less, the other more; but of putting away or not putting away an unbelieving spouse, since one of these is not expedient and the other is, it ought not to be said, “He who puts her away does well, and he who does not put her away does better,” but it ought to be said, “Let him not put her away, because, although it is permitted, it is not expedient.” So we can say that it is better not to put away an unbelieving spouse, although it is also permitted to put her away, in the way that we rightly say that what is both permitted and expedient is better than what is permitted and not expedient.

For these reasons it happened that, in expounding the long sermon which the Lord gave on the mountain, when I came to the question of putting away or not putting away spouses, I also brought in testimonies from the apostle and said that it was the apostle's counsel, not the Lord's command, where he says, “But to the rest I say, not the Lord,” advising those who had unbelieving spouses not to put them away if they consented to live with them. This certainly had to be advised, not commanded, because people are not to be forbidden to do lawful things, even though they are not expedient, with as much weight as unlawful things are forbidden. And if somewhere the apostle has deigned to advise even things that ought to be commanded, he did this to spare weakness, not to prejudice the command. So if he said, “I do not write these things to shame you, but I advise you as my dearest children,” what question does this raise about where he says, “I say, not the Lord”? Likewise, where he says, “Behold, I Paul say to you that if you are circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing,” did he say here too, “I, not the Lord”? These cases, then, are not alike, since it is neither unworthy nor contrary if the apostle advises the very things the Lord commands. For we advise those dear to us to do the Lord's precepts or commands. But when he says, “I say, not the Lord,” he shows clearly enough that the Lord did not forbid what he himself forbade; and the Lord would have forbidden it if it were unlawful. So, according to what we have said at length and turned over a good deal above, it was lawful according to righteousness, but even though lawful it was not to be done, for the sake of free goodwill.

But you, who hold that what the apostle, not the Lord, forbids is not permitted, in the same way that what the Lord forbids is not permitted, when you wished to explain what he meant by saying, “I say, not the Lord,” as he addressed believers who had unbelieving spouses, said: “Because the Lord commanded that marriages of different religion should not be contracted.” And you brought in the testimony of the Lord himself, saying, “You shall not take a wife for your son from the daughters of foreigners, lest she lead him away after her gods and his soul perish.” You also added the words of the apostle where he said, “A wife is bound as long as her husband lives. But if her husband dies, she is free; let her marry whom she wishes, only in the Lord.” You explained this by adding, “that is, to a Christian.” Then you went on and said: “This, then, is the Lord's command in the Old as well as in the New Testament, that only marriages of one religion and faith should remain joined.” If, then, this is the Lord's command in the Old Testament as well as in the New, and the Lord commands this and the apostle teaches it, that only marriages of one religion and faith should remain joined, why does the apostle command, against this command of the Lord, against his own teaching, against the precept of the Old and New Testaments, that marriages of different faith should remain joined? “Because Paul,” you say, “the preacher and apostle of the gentiles, not only advises but even commands those already married that, if one husband or one wife had believed, he or she should not put away the other who did not believe but consented to live with the believer.” By these words of yours you show plainly enough that the one thing is different from the other. For the one concerns marriages that are being contracted for the first time, that a woman should not marry a man not of her religion, nor a man take such a wife. For this, as you say, God commands, the apostle teaches, and both Testaments enjoin. But who would deny that the other is different, where the question is not of those to be joined but of those already joined? For both were of one and the same unbelief when they were joined; but when the gospel came, one husband believed without his wife, or one wife without her husband. If, then, this is a different thing, as appears without the scruple of any doubt, why does the Lord not command, as the apostle does, that a believer remain in marriage with an unbeliever? Unless perhaps in this place there is no force in what he says so confidently: “Or do you wish to have proof of Christ, who speaks in me?” And Christ is certainly the Lord. Do you understand what I am saying? Or shall I dwell somewhat more carefully on explaining it?

Pay attention, so that we may set the matter itself out in plainer language, as if to be examined before our eyes. Here are two spouses of one unbelief; they were so when they were joined. There is no question about them that relates to that command of the Lord, the apostolic teaching, and the precept of the Old and New Testaments by which a believer is forbidden to contract marriage with an unbeliever. They are already spouses, and both are still unbelievers; they are still what they were before they were joined and when they were joined. A preacher of the gospel comes; one of them, husband or wife, believes, but in such a way that the unbeliever consents to live with the believer. Does the Lord command the believer not to put away the unbeliever, or not? If you say he commands it, the apostle protests: “I say, not the Lord.” If you say he does not command it, I ask the reason. And you will not give me the one you put in your letter, that the Lord forbids believers to be joined to unbelievers. For here that reason does not apply at all; we are speaking of those already joined, not of those to be joined. If, then, you have not found the reason why the Lord does not forbid what the apostle forbids (for you now see, I think, that it is not the one you had supposed), consider whether it is not perhaps the one that seemed right to me, which I had to put forward then and must defend now: namely, that we should understand that the Lord speaks what involves a righteousness before him that may in no way be transgressed, that is, what he commands or forbids in such a way that it is not at all permitted to do otherwise; but that what he leaves to the power of one who wills, so that it is neither done nor left undone unlawfully, he gives room in it for the counsel of his servants, so that they may urge rather what they see to be expedient.

Let this, then, be held here first and foremost: that unlawful things not be committed. But where something is lawful in such a way that doing otherwise is not unlawful, let what is expedient be done. Those things, then, which the Lord says as Lord, that is, not by the counsel of one who advises but by the command of one who rules, it is not lawful not to do, and therefore not expedient either. So the Lord commanded that a wife not depart from her husband; but if she departs (certainly for the cause for which departing is lawful), she is to remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband; for a woman under a husband is bound by the law while her husband lives, and while her husband lives she will be called an adulteress if she is with another man, since a wife is bound as long as her husband lives. Hence, if a wife puts away her husband and marries another, she commits adultery; and he who marries a woman put away by her husband commits adultery. And therefore, by the same command of the Lord, the husband too is not to put away his wife, since whoever puts away his wife apart from the cause of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery. But if he puts her away for this cause, let him also remain as he is; for everyone who puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery. These decrees of the Lord are to be kept without any withdrawal. For they carry the righteousness that is before him, whether people approve or disapprove. And therefore it must not be said that they are not to be kept because of people's offense, or lest people be hindered from the salvation that is in Christ. For what Christian would dare to say, “So as not to offend people, or in order to win people for Christ, I will make my wife commit adultery, so that I myself become an adulterer”?

For it can happen that, when a Christian has put away an adulterous wife, he is tempted in this way: some woman who does not yet believe, wishing to enter into marriage with him, promises that she will become a Christian, not deceitfully, but fully intending to do so if she marries him. The tempter will be able to suggest to him, while he still refuses marriage: “The Lord said, ‘Whoever puts away his wife apart from the cause of sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery’; but you, who put away your wife for the cause of sexual immorality, will not commit adultery if you marry another.” To one suggesting such things let him answer with an instructed heart that the one who puts away his wife apart from the cause of sexual immorality and marries another does indeed commit adultery more gravely, but that the one who, having put away a wife who committed sexual immorality, has joined himself to another, does not for that reason not commit adultery because he left a woman committing adultery; just as he commits adultery who marries a woman put away apart from the cause of sexual immorality, and the one who marries a woman he has found put away for that cause does not for that reason not commit adultery. And for this reason what is put somewhat obscurely in Matthew, since the whole is signified by a part, is explained in the others, who expressed the whole generally, as is read in Mark, “Whoever puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery,” and in Luke, “Everyone who puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery.” For they did not say that some who put away their wives and marry others commit adultery and others do not; but “whoever puts away”: they said without any exception that absolutely everyone who puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery.

But if that Christian answers the tempter in this way, understanding that he was indeed permitted to put away an adulteress but is not permitted to marry another, what if the tempter says, “Commit this sin, so that you may win for Christ the soul of a woman set in the death of unbelief, who is ready to become a Christian if she marries you”? What else should the Christian answer to this, except that if he does this he cannot escape the judgment the apostle mentioned where he says, “And as some claim we say, ‘Let us do evil that good may come’; their condemnation is just”? And how can she be a Christian to her salvation, when she will be an adulteress with the man who marries her?

Not only must there be no adultery, which not some but everyone commits who puts away his wife and marries another, even if he marries her to make her a Christian; but also whoever, not bound to a wife, has vowed continence to God must in no way sin by such a compensation as to believe that he should marry because the woman who seeks marriage with him has promised to become a Christian. For what was permitted to anyone before he made a vow will not be permitted once he has vowed never to do it; provided that he vowed what ought to be vowed, such as perpetual virginity, or continence after experience of marriage by those released from the conjugal bond, or by faithful and chaste spouses who vow by consent and release each other from the carnal debt, which it is not right for husband or wife to vow without the other. These, then, and any others that are most rightly vowed, when people have vowed them, are not to be broken on any condition, since they vowed them without any condition; for it must be understood that the Lord commanded this too, where it is read, “Vow and pay to the Lord your God.” Hence the apostle says of certain women who vow continence and afterwards wish to marry, which was certainly permitted to them before they vowed, “incurring condemnation, because they have made void their first faith.”

Nothing, then, that is unlawful is expedient, and nothing that the Lord forbids is lawful. But in the things left to our power, with no command of the Lord binding us, let the apostle be heard advising and counseling in the Holy Spirit, so that either better things may be chosen or things that are not expedient may be avoided. There let him be heard saying, “I have no command of the Lord, but I give counsel,” and, “I say, not the Lord.” There, if the hearer chooses the better things, let one who is released from a wife not seek a wife, since even if he takes a wife he does not sin; there let the virgin not marry. For he who does not give her in marriage does better, and he who gives her in marriage does well. There let the woman be happier by remaining so, who, when her husband has died, has it in her power to marry whom she wishes, only in the Lord. This can be taken in two ways: either remaining a Christian or marrying a Christian. For I do not recall that, in the time of the revealed New Testament, it has been declared without ambiguity in the gospel or in any apostolic letters whether the Lord forbade believers to be joined to unbelievers; although the most blessed Cyprian has no doubt about it and does not place it among light sins to join the bond of marriage with unbelievers, and says that this is to prostitute the members of Christ to gentiles. But since there is another question about those already joined, let the apostle be heard here too, saying, “If any brother has an unbelieving wife and she consents to live with him, let him not put her away; and if any woman has an unbelieving husband and he consents to live with her, let her not put away her husband”; and let him be heard in such a way that, although it is lawful to do it, since the Lord does not say this, it should nevertheless not be done, because it is not expedient. For the apostle teaches most plainly that not all things that are lawful are expedient, as we have already shown above. Yet for any kind of fornication, whether of the flesh or of the spirit, under which unbelief also is understood, it is not permitted, when a husband has been put away, to marry another, nor, when a wife has been put away, to marry another; since the Lord, making no exception, says, “If a wife puts away her husband and marries another, she commits adultery,” and, “Everyone who puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery.”

Having treated and discussed these matters according to my small ability, I am nevertheless well aware that the question of marriage is most obscure and most intricate. Nor do I dare to claim that I have so far unfolded all its windings, either in this work or in another, or that I can do so now if pressed. As for the matter on which you thought I should be consulted in another sheet, I would also take care to untie it separately if I held a different view from yours; but since our judgment is the same, there is no need to dispute at length on it.

As for catechumens at the end of this life, if they are so overcome by illness or some accident that, although still alive, they cannot ask for baptism for themselves or answer the questions put to them, let it avail them that their will is already known to the Christian faithful, so that they may be baptized in the way infants are baptized, whose will has not yet appeared at all. Yet we ought not on that account to condemn those who act more timidly than seems right to us, lest we be judged to have wished to judge rashly rather than cautiously about the money entrusted to our fellow servant. For in such matters we must pay sufficient regard to that saying of the apostle, “Each of us will give account of himself to God. Let us therefore no longer judge one another.” For there are some who think that in these or other cases we should observe what we read the Lord said: “Do not give what is holy to dogs, nor throw your pearls before swine.” And, revering these words of the Savior, they do not dare to baptize those who cannot answer for themselves, lest perhaps their will be set the other way. This cannot be said of little ones, in whom there is as yet no use of reason. But not only is it incredible that a catechumen should not want to be baptized at the end of this life; even if his will is uncertain, it is much better to give to one unwilling than to refuse one willing, where it is not clear whether he wills or not, yet it is more credible that, if he could, he would say he wished to receive those sacraments without which he already believed he ought not to leave the body.

But if the Lord, when he said, “Do not give what is holy to dogs,” had wished what these people think must be guarded against to be understood, he would not himself have given to his betrayer what that unworthy man received among the worthy, to his own ruin, without fault in the giver. Hence, when the Lord said this, we must believe that he wished to signify that unclean hearts cannot bear the light of spiritual understanding; and if a teacher thrusts on them what they must bear, then, because they do not receive it rightly, since they do not grasp it, they either tear it with the bites of criticism or trample on it with contempt. For if the blessed apostle says he gave milk, not solid food, to those who had indeed been reborn in Christ but were still little ones (“for you were not yet able,” he says, “and even now you are not able”), and if, finally, the Lord himself said to the chosen apostles, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now,” how much less can the unclean minds of the ungodly bear whatever is said of the incorporeal light! But so that our discourse may rather close on the matter where it began: not only other catechumens, but even those who, joined in marriage to persons whose former spouses are living, keep up adulterous partnerships, although we do not admit them to baptism while they are in health, I think should be baptized if they lie in despair of life and cannot answer for themselves, so that this sin too may be washed away with the others by the washing of regeneration. For who knows whether they had perhaps resolved to be held by the allurement of adulterous flesh only until baptism? But if, restored from that despair, they are able to live, either they will do what they had resolved, or, when instructed, they will obey, or what must be done even with baptized persons of that kind will be done with them as despisers. The case of reconciliation is the same as that of baptism, if the danger of ending life should overtake a penitent. For mother church ought not to want them either to leave this life without the pledge of their peace.

To what you had written to me, devout brother Pollentius, I had already written in reply a volume of some size about those who are joined to others while their spouses are living. When this became known to your Charity, you added some things to your treatise, wishing me to answer these too. But while I was planning to do so by adding to mine as well, so that my reply too would be a single book, what I had finished earlier was suddenly published, at the urgent request of brothers who did not know that something was still to be added. So it happened that I was compelled to answer your additions in another, separate little work. Your additions, however, were not attached to the end of your treatise but inserted into its body wherever it seemed fitting.