On Adulterous Marriages 2.15–2.22

How much better, then, how much more honorable, how much more worthy of the Christian profession, that they should spare the blood of adulterous wives because we say to them what is written: “Forgive your neighbor his injustice, and then, when you pray, your sins will be loosed. Does a man keep anger against a man and seek healing from the Lord? Has he no mercy on a man like himself, and does he pray for his own sins? Though he is flesh, he keeps wrath; who will make atonement for his sins?” And from the gospel: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven,” so that we may be able to say, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors”; and from the apostle: “Repaying no one evil for evil”; and whatever other such things there are in the holy Scriptures, by which the human mind, when it is roused to vengeance, is calmed because it is Christian. How much better, I say, that we say these things than that we should say: “Just put away these adulterous women and do not seek their blood; whatever grief you have from their shameful deeds, other women whom you marry will console you. You would rightly wish to remove these from the number of the living if their life were an obstacle to your marrying others. But now, since you are permitted to provide yourselves other marriages even while they live, why do you want so badly to kill them?” If we say this, do you not see how far our persuasion is from the Christian character? We both tell them falsely that what is not permitted is permitted, namely to be joined to others while those wives live; and if they spare them for this reason, they do not spare them out of devotion but for the free power of other marriages. Finally, I ask you whether a Christian husband is permitted, either by the old law of God or by Roman laws, to kill an adulteress. If it is permitted, it is better that he refrain from both, that is, both from the lawful punishment of the sinning woman and from an unlawful marriage while she lives. But if he insists on choosing one or the other, it is better for him to do what is permitted, so that the adulteress is punished, than what is not permitted, so that he commits adultery while she lives. But if, as is more truly said, a Christian is not permitted to kill an adulterous wife, but only to put her away, who is so mad as to say to him, “Do what is not permitted, so that what is not permitted may be permitted to you”? For since, according to the law of Christ, both are unlawful, whether to kill an adulteress or to marry another while she lives, one must abstain from both, not do the unlawful for the unlawful. For if he is going to do what is not permitted, let him rather commit adultery and not commit murder, marrying another while his wife lives rather than shedding human blood. But if both are wicked, he ought not to commit the one in place of the other, but to avoid both.

Here I see what could be said by the incontinent: namely, that one who puts away an adulteress and lets her live, if he marries another, is a perpetual adulterer as long as the first wife lives, and does not do fruitful penance, since he does not withdraw from the shameful deed; nor, if he is a catechumen, is he admitted to baptism, since he does not change from what hinders him; nor can he be reconciled as a penitent while persisting in the same wickedness. But if he has an adulteress killed by accusing her, this sin, since it is over and done and he does not remain in it, is washed away by baptism if committed by a catechumen, and, if by one baptized, is healed by penance and reconciliation. But shall we therefore say that adultery is not adultery, which is undoubtedly committed if another woman is married while an adulterous wife lives? Setting aside this kind of adultery, you surely do not doubt that it is adultery if someone marries the wife of a living man, put away by her husband with a certificate of divorce without any sexual immorality on the woman's part. What then? When he sees that he is neither admitted to baptism, if he is a catechumen, nor does penance usefully, if he did this when baptized, since he does not correct and abandon what he did, suppose he wishes and is able to kill the man whose wife he married, so that this crime may either be washed away by baptism or loosed by penance, and so that adultery too may not continue, the woman being discharged from the law of her husband after her husband's death. And suppose satisfaction is made by penance for what was done in the past, or it is blotted out by regeneration: is the law of Christ therefore to be accused, as if it compelled murder to be done, when it says that to marry a woman divorced without the charge of sexual immorality is adultery?

For here, if we pay too little attention to what we are saying, much more serious things can be said than you yourself said. For you, not wanting it to be adultery when other women are married after adulterous wives have been put away, came up with this: “Since, if we call these adulteries, husbands will be driven to kill adulterous wives whose life prevents them from marrying others.” And to magnify this you said, “It does not seem to me, most beloved father, that this is the divine meaning, where kindness and devotion are excluded.” If, then, someone who is unwilling to believe that it is adultery when a woman divorced by her husband without the charge of sexual immorality is married by another should find this argument against you, that by this reasoning people are persuaded to commit murders, and to attack the husbands of women divorced in this way whom they have married, whether by any plots they can, or by false charges, or to accuse them of some true crimes and have them killed, so that after their death there may be marriages that were adulteries while they lived: will he not say to you, magnifying it, “It does not seem to me, most beloved father, that this is the divine meaning, where not only kindness and devotion are excluded, but also enormous malice and ungodliness are aroused”? Since it is much lighter and more tolerable that husbands should kill adulterous wives than that adulterers should kill husbands. Would you have us, because of this most empty ill will, abandon the defense of the Lord's saying, or even accuse it besides, saying that it should not be judged adultery even if a woman divorced by her husband apart from the cause of sexual immorality is joined to another, lest he be driven to kill the husband who put her away, while he desires to turn adultery into marriage by the death of the first husband? I know this does not please you, that because of this most empty ill will the law of Christ, when it is found true and sound, should be called harsh and inhuman. So, then, it ought not to seem to you that adultery must be denied when another is married while an adulterous wife lives, because a husband may thereby be driven to kill an adulteress, since he wishes to be allowed to marry another once she is dead, if he may not do so while she lives. What if the detractors of the Christian faith also say that men are driven to kill, by criminal plots, wives they cannot bear as troublesome, whether suffering long illness and unable to bear intercourse, or poor, or barren, or ugly, in the hope of marrying others who are healthy, wealthy, fruitful, and very beautiful, because it is not permitted to divorce those they do not want to bear with, apart from the cause of sexual immorality, and marry others, lest, bound in perpetual adultery, they can neither be baptized nor healed by penance? Shall we therefore, lest these crimes of murder be committed, say that it is not adultery to join other women to oneself after divorcing one's wives apart from the cause of sexual immorality?

Now, from your opinion that it is not adultery if a man casts off his wife for the cause of sexual immorality and marries another, do you not think we must beware lest husbands learn to drive their wives, whom they cannot bear for innumerable other reasons, to commit adultery, so that, the conjugal bond being dissolved, as you think, by sexual immorality, they may be permitted to marry others, and may be either washed by baptism or healed by penance from having driven them to commit adultery; since both grace and remedy will be denied them as long as they live with adulteresses, if they marry others after divorcing the first apart from the cause of sexual immorality? Unless perhaps someone says that no one can make his wife commit adultery if she is chaste. And yet the Lord says, “Everyone who puts away his wife apart from the cause of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery”; surely because, although she was chaste with her husband, yet when put away she is driven by incontinence to join another while the first is alive, and this is to commit adultery. And if she does not do this, still he, as far as lies in him, compelled her to do it; and God will impute this to him as sin, even if she remains chaste. But who does not know how extremely rare are the women who live so chastely with their husbands that, even if put away by them, they do not seek others? For the number of women is incomparably greater who, although they cling chastely to their husbands, do not delay to marry if they are put away by their husbands. When, then, people have believed the Lord, who says, “Everyone who puts away his wife apart from the cause of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery,” if they also believe you, who say that when a wife commits sexual immorality her husband may marry another, then whoever wishes to be rid of the wife to whom he is joined, because of any other troubles whatever, will first make her commit adultery by putting her away without sexual immorality, so that he may then marry another when she has become an adulteress by marrying; and so, freed from the former sin by which he made her commit adultery, whether through baptism or through penance, he will seem to have without adultery of his own the woman he married after the former's adultery, as though the marriage bond had thereby been dissolved. But if he schemes this, he will both make his wife an adulteress and himself be an adulterer, even though he marries another after his spouse's adultery; and it will profit him nothing that he believed you and not rather him who, excepting no one, said, “Everyone who leaves his wife and marries another commits adultery.”

When all these things have been considered and treated, it remains that those who hear them faithfully may say to us what was said to the Lord: “If such is the case with a wife, it is not expedient to marry.” And what shall we answer them but what he himself answered? “Not all receive this word, but those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born so from their mother's womb; and there are eunuchs who were made so by men; and there are eunuchs who have castrated themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let him who can receive it receive it.” Let him, then, who can receive what not all receive. And those can receive it to whom the mercy of God grants it, hidden but not unjust. But among all those who have castrated themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, some, of either sex, do not know intercourse; others have experienced it and turned away, some having experienced it unlawfully, some lawfully. Among those who have experienced it lawfully, some have done so only lawfully, others both lawfully and unlawfully. For there are among them those who know only their marriages; and there are those who have also known other women and any kind of illicit intercourse. But those who castrate themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven after intercourse with their spouses either lose their spouses by death, or profess continence with them by consent, or, by the necessity of divorces, lest they commit adultery by joining themselves to others while their spouses live, castrate themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, not so that they may be more glorious there, but because they cannot be there otherwise. For those who contain themselves not from this necessity but from desire for a better good could have been there even if they had kept conjugal chastity, though with lesser rewards, yet inside; but those who contain themselves because they fear to marry others while their former spouses live ought to take greater care for their salvation than those did by whom continence was loved for a greater reward. For they will be there if they are not adulterers; but if they do not contain themselves, they will be adulterers, since, while their former spouses live, they will cling not to other spouses but to adulteresses. And if they are absent from the kingdom of heaven, where will they be, except where they will not be saved?

I address these, then, so that what they would have to do if they had spouses wasting away with long illness, or absent in a place they cannot reach, or practicing continence with unlawful stubbornness, this they should do if they have spouses soiled with adulterous defilement and divorced from their company for that reason: let them not seek other marriages, because they will not be marriages but adulteries. For since the rule of husband and wife is equal in this bond, just as a wife will be called an adulteress if she is with another man while her husband lives, so also a husband will be called an adulterer if he is with another woman while his wife lives. For even though the one who does so apart from the cause of sexual immorality does so more gravely, still everyone who puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery. Let the burden of continence not frighten them; it will be light if it is Christ's; it will be Christ's if faith is present, which obtains from the one who commands what he has commanded. Let it not break them that their continence seems to be of necessity, not of will; for those too who chose it by will have made it a matter of necessity, since they can no longer turn from it without condemnation; and those who have been pushed into it by necessity make it a matter of will, if they trust not in themselves but in him from whom every good comes. The former climbed to it for the sake of greater glory, to find something more; the latter fled to it out of care for their final salvation, lest they perish. Let both persevere; let both walk in what they have reached to the end; let them be fervent in zeal and pray with desire; for the former too must think of salvation, fearing to fall from what their will has seized, and the latter must not despair of glory, if they love to persist in what necessity has brought upon them. For it can happen that, with God frightening and exhorting, converting and filling, the human disposition is changed for the better, so that they vow to live most perseveringly without marriage and without any intercourse or unclean touching of lust; so that, even if the separated spouses, by dying, should open the way to marrying others, what lies open by what is lawful is closed by the vow, and what was begun from necessity is made perfect by charity. To such, surely, will be given what is given to those who either vowed this with their spouses by mutual consent or, bound by no marriages, chose continence for the sake of a greater good. But if they contain themselves in such a way that they intend to marry others if those die whose life prevents them from marrying, then surely, even if they themselves leave the body first in such continence, it is credited to them only as conjugal chastity, for the sake of which they do not do what they would do if it were permitted. For to live continently with this intention is too little to receive the rewards of the continence that is more freely chosen, but it is enough to avoid adulteries.

Remember that I say these things of both sexes, but chiefly for the sake of men, who think themselves superior to women precisely so as not to deign to be their equals in chastity, in which they ought even to lead, so that the women might follow them as their heads. But when the law forbids adulteries, if the excuse of the weakness of the flesh is admitted under the pretext of incontinence, an occasion of perishing is opened to many under the name of a false impunity. For women too have flesh, and men do not want anything of the kind permitted to them, as if it were permitted to men because they are men. But far be it that what is taken away from modesty should be owed to the better sex as if to its honor, since just honor is owed to virtue, not to vice. Indeed, since they demand such great chastity from women, who certainly have flesh, that when they are away from their wives for a very long time they want them to pass the heat of youth undefiled by adulterous intercourse (and very many do pass it most chastely, especially Syrian women, whose husbands, occupied in the profits of trade, leave them as young girls and barely return as old men to old women), by this very fact they are more evidently proved wrong that what they claim they cannot do is impossible. For if human weakness could not do this, much less could the weaker sex of women.

Hence, when we try to frighten those who think manly excellence is nothing but license to sin, lest they perish forever by clinging to adulterous marriages, we are accustomed to set before them also the continence of the clergy, who are often seized against their will to take up this same burden, and, having taken it up, carry it through with the Lord's help to the proper end. We say to them, then: “What if you too were seized by the violence of the people to take this up? Would you not chastely keep the office once taken up, turning suddenly to obtain from the Lord strength of which you had never thought before?” “But they,” they say, “are greatly consoled by the honor.” We answer: “And let fear govern you much more. For if many ministers of God have accepted this when it was laid on them suddenly and unexpectedly, hoping to shine more brightly in the inheritance of Christ, how much more ought you to live continently, avoiding adulteries, fearing not to shine less in the kingdom of God but to burn in the Gehenna of fire!” These and similar things we say, as best we can, to those who wish to marry others when their spouses have in some way left them or been put away for adultery, and who, when they are forbidden, set the weakness of the flesh against us. But now this book too must be closed, and God asked either not to allow them to be tempted by separations from their spouses, or to allow it in such a way that fear for their endangered salvation may become for them the occasion of a greater or more tested chastity.