On Adulterous Marriages 2.2–2.14

The first of these (and I think I ought to answer it) is that, in these words of the apostle, where he says, “But to the rest I say, not the Lord, that the wife not depart from her husband; but if she departs, she is to remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband,” you do not think “if she departs” was said so that it should be understood that she departed from a husband committing sexual immorality, the only cause for which departing is lawful; you think rather that she departed from a chaste husband, and was ordered to remain unmarried so that she could be reconciled to him if he did not wish to be continent, lest by not being reconciled she drive her husband to commit sexual immorality, that is, to marry another while she lived. But if she departed from a husband committing sexual immorality, you think she is not commanded to remain unmarried, but does so if she wishes to be continent, and is not found to be a violator of the command if she marries. You think the same rule should be kept by the husband too: that he should not put away his wife except for the cause of sexual immorality; but if he puts her away, he should remain without marriage so that he can be reconciled to his chaste wife, unless she has chosen continence, lest by shunning reconciliation with a chaste wife he himself force her to commit adultery, if, not containing herself, she marries another while he lives. But if he has been separated from a wife committing sexual immorality, you think he is now held by no command to be continent, and does not commit adultery at all if he marries another while she lives. For what the same apostle says, “A wife is bound as long as her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is free; let her marry whom she wishes,” you think should be understood in such a way that, if a husband has committed sexual immorality, he is to be counted as dead, and the wife likewise as dead, and therefore either of them may be joined to another after sexual immorality as after death.

Having considered these views of yours, I ask you whether whoever marries a woman who has ceased to be bound to her husband is to be held an adulterer. I think it does not seem so to you. For the reason a woman will be called an adulteress if she is with another man while her husband lives is that a wife is bound as long as her husband lives; and if she did not have this bond with her living husband, she would marry another without any charge of adultery. Accordingly, if she is bound as long as her husband lives, she is in no way to be said to be released from this bond except when her husband has died. Moreover, if this bond between husband and wife is dissolved by the death of either of them, and sexual immorality too, as you say, is to be counted as death, then without doubt the wife too will be released from this bond when she has committed sexual immorality. For it cannot be said that she is bound to her husband when her husband has been released from her. And so, after she has ceased by committing sexual immorality to be bound to her husband, whoever marries her will not be an adulterer. And see how absurd it is that he should not be an adulterer precisely because he has married an adulteress! Indeed, what is more monstrous, the woman herself will not be an adulteress either, since she will not be another man's wife to her later husband, but his own. For once the former conjugal bond has been dissolved by adultery, whomever she then marries who has no wife, she will not be an adulteress with an adulterer, but rather a wife with her husband. How then will it be true that “a wife is bound as long as her husband lives”? Look, her husband lives, since he has neither left the body nor committed sexual immorality, which you want to count as death; and yet the wife is no longer bound to him. Do you not notice how contrary this is to the apostle, who says, “A wife is bound as long as her husband lives”? Or will you perhaps say, “He lives indeed, but he is no longer her husband, since he ceased to be so when she dissolved the conjugal bond by adultery”? How then “will she be called an adulteress if she is with another man while her husband lives,” since he is no longer her husband, the conjugal bond having already been dissolved by the woman's adultery? For while which husband lives, if not her own, will she be called an adulteress if she is with another man? But if he has already ceased to be her husband, she will certainly not be called an adulteress if she is with another man while her husband lives; rather, having no husband, by marrying she will be with her own husband. Do you not see how contrary to the apostle one who holds this holds? You yourself do not hold it, indeed, but it follows from what you do hold. Change the premises, then, if you want to avoid the consequences, and do not say that in this passage the dead husband or dead wife should be understood also of one who commits sexual immorality. Therefore, according to sound doctrine, “a wife is bound as long as her husband lives,” that is, has not yet departed from the body; for “a woman under a husband is bound by the law to her living husband,” that is, to one still in the body. “But if he dies,” that is, leaves the body, “she is discharged from the law of the husband. So then, while her husband lives, she will be called an adulteress if she is with another man; but if her husband dies, she is freed from the law, so that she is not an adulteress if she is with another man.” These words of the apostle, repeated so often, pressed home so often, are true, living, sound, and plain. A woman begins to be the wife of no later husband unless she has ceased to be the wife of the former. And she will cease to be the wife of the former if her husband dies, not if he commits sexual immorality. A spouse is therefore lawfully put away for the cause of sexual immorality; but the bond of chastity remains, because of which the one who marries a woman put away even for this cause of sexual immorality becomes guilty of adultery.

For just as a person guilty of some crime is excommunicated while the sacrament of regeneration remains in him, and he does not lose that sacrament even if he is never reconciled to God, so a wife is put away for the cause of sexual immorality while the bond of the conjugal covenant remains in her, and she will not lose that bond even if she is never reconciled to her husband; but she will lose it if her husband dies. The excommunicated offender, however, will never lose the sacrament of regeneration, even unreconciled, because God never dies. It remains, then, if we want to be wise according to the apostle, that we should not say that an adulterous husband is to be counted as dead and that therefore his wife may marry another. For although adultery is a death, not of the body but, what is worse, of the soul, the apostle was not speaking of this death when he said, “But if her husband dies, let her marry whom she wishes,” but only of that by which one leaves the body. For if the conjugal bond is dissolved by a spouse's adultery, there follows that perversity which I have shown must be avoided: that the woman too is released from this bond by her unchastity; and if she is released, she will be free from the law of her husband, and therefore (a most foolish thing to say) she will not be an adulteress if she is with another man, because she has been freed from her former husband by adultery. But if this is so far from the truth that no sense, I do not say Christian, but human, admits it, then certainly “a wife is bound as long as her husband lives,” that is, to say it more plainly, as long as her husband is in the body. By the same rule, then, the husband too is bound as long as his wife is in the body. Hence, if he wishes to put away an adulteress, let him not marry another, lest he himself commit what he blames in her. Likewise the wife, if she puts away an adulterer, let her not join herself to another; for she is bound as long as her husband lives, and she is not freed from the law of her husband except when he is dead, so that she is not an adulteress if she is with another man.

But what seems hard to you, that after adultery a spouse should be reconciled to a spouse, will not be hard if faith is present. For why do we still count as adulterers those whom we believe to have been washed by baptism or healed by repentance? These crimes were not cleansed by any sacrifices in the old law of God, but they are cleansed without doubt by the blood of the New Testament; and therefore it was then altogether forbidden to take back a wife defiled by another man, although David took back without hesitation, as one prefiguring the New Testament, Saul's daughter, whom her father had separated from him and given to another. But now, after Christ said to the adulteress, “Neither will I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more,” who does not understand that a husband ought to forgive what he sees the Lord of both has forgiven, and that he ought no longer to call her an adulteress whose crime, when she repented, he believes has been blotted out by divine mercy?

But this, of course, the mind of unbelievers abhors, so much that some of little faith, or rather enemies of the true faith, fearing, I believe, that impunity to sin was being given to their wives, removed from their copies what the Lord did in pardoning the adulteress; as if he who said, “From now on sin no more,” had granted permission to sin, or as if the woman should not have been healed by God the physician through the forgiveness of that sin, lest the unhealthy be offended. For those whom that deed of the Lord displeases are not themselves chaste, nor is it chastity that makes them severe; rather, they belong to the number of those to whom the Lord said, “Let him among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Except that those, terrified by their conscience, withdrew and ceased to tempt Christ and to pursue the adulteress; but these, though sick, both criticize the physician and, adulterers themselves, rage against adulteresses. If it were said to them, not what those men heard, “He who is without sin” (for who is without sin?), but, “He who is without this sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her,” then perhaps those who were indignant that the adulteress had not been killed would consider how great was the mercy of God that spared them, so that adulterers could live.

But when we say this to them, not only do they refuse to take anything away from their severity, but they are angry besides at the truth, and speak and answer: “But we are men. Shall the dignity of our sex bear this insult, that, if we commit anything with other women besides our wives, we should be put on a level with women in suffering penalties?” As if they ought not to curb unlawful desires the more manfully precisely because they are men; as if they ought not to offer themselves the more to their wives as an example of this virtue precisely because they are men; as if they ought not to be the less overcome by lust precisely because they are men; as if they ought not to serve wanton flesh the less precisely because they are men. And yet they are indignant if they hear that adulterous men pay penalties like adulterous women, when they ought to be punished the more severely, the more it belongs to them both to surpass women in virtue and to guide them by example. I am speaking, indeed, to Christians, who hear faithfully, “The head of the woman is the man,” where they recognize that they are to be leaders and the women their companions. And therefore a husband must beware of going, in his way of life, where he fears his wife may follow by imitating him. But let those who dislike that one and the same rule of chastity be kept between husband and wife, and who prefer, especially in this matter, to be subject to the laws of the world rather than to those of Christ, since the laws of the courts do not seem to bind men with the same bonds of chastity as women, read what the emperor Antoninus, certainly not a Christian, decreed on this matter, where a husband is not allowed to accuse his wife of the crime of adultery if he has not given her an example of chastity by his own conduct, so that both would be condemned if the trial itself proved both equally unchaste. For these are the words of the aforesaid emperor, which are read in the Gregorian Code: “My letter, to be sure, will in no respect prejudge the case. For if it was your fault that the marriage was dissolved and your wife Eupasia married again according to the Julian law, she will not be condemned for adultery by my rescript on that account, unless it is established that it was committed. The judges will have this before their eyes to inquire, whether, while you lived chastely, you also led her to cultivate good morals. For it seems to me most unjust that a husband should demand from his wife a chastity that he himself does not show. This can also condemn the husband, not settle the matter between both by setting off one crime against the other, or remove the cause of action.” If these things are to be observed for the honor of the earthly city, how much more chaste are those whom the heavenly homeland and the fellowship of the angels seek! This being so, is men's unchastity therefore less, and not rather greater and worse, because they have a proud and licentious boasting? Let men not, then, recoil from the fact that Christ pardoned the adulteress; but let them rather recognize their own danger too, and, suffering from a similar disease, flee with humble devotion to the same Savior; let them confess that what they read was done for her is necessary for themselves also; let them receive the remedy for their adulteries, cease now to commit adultery, praise God's patience in their regard, do penance, obtain pardon, and change their judgment about the punishment of women and their own impunity.

When these things have been considered and treated, if the common condition, the common evil, the common danger, the common wound, and the common salvation are thought of faithfully and humbly, the reconciliation of spouses will be neither shameful nor difficult, even after adulteries committed and purged, where no one doubts that the forgiveness of sins takes place through the keys of the kingdom of heaven: not so that an adulteress may be called back after her husband's divorce, but so that after fellowship with Christ she may not be called an adulteress. But suppose it does not happen; no one compels it, since perhaps some law of this world forbids it, according to the measure of the earthly city, where the abolition of crimes through the holy blood has not been thought of. Let continence, then, be undertaken, which no law forbids; let there be no going into other adulteries. And what is it to us if the adulteress, even though cleansed by divine mercy, is not reconciled to her husband, provided that the unreconciled do not enter into other so-called marriages which are proved to be adulteries? For “a wife is bound as long as her husband lives.” Consequently, the husband too is bound as long as his wife lives. This binding means that they cannot be joined to others without an adulterous union. Hence it necessarily follows that from two spouses four adulterers come about, if she marries another and he marries an adulteress. For although he commits adultery more wickedly who, having put away his wife not for the cause of sexual immorality, marries another (the kind of adultery Matthew mentioned), yet not only he commits adultery, but, as in Mark, “whoever puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if a wife puts away her husband and marries another, she commits adultery,” and, as in Luke, “everyone who puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery; and he who marries a woman put away by her husband commits adultery.” I discussed these testimonies sufficiently in the previous book.

But you answer me: “To live continently belongs to few; and therefore those who have put away spouses who committed sexual immorality, since they cannot be reconciled, see themselves in such danger that they declare the law of Christ not humane but savage.” O brother, as far as the incontinent are concerned, they can have many complaints on account of which, as you say, they may declare the law of Christ savage, not humane. And yet we must not pervert or change the gospel of Christ because of them. You are moved only by the complaint of those who put away their spouses for the intervening cause of sexual immorality, if they are not allowed to marry others, since continence belongs to few and they should be urged to it by praise, not compelled by law. So, if another is not married once the adulteress has been put away, human incontinence will have, as you think, a just complaint. But consider how many more cases there are in which, if we wished to admit the complaints of the incontinent, we should have to permit adulteries to be committed. What if a spouse is held by some long and incurable bodily illness by which intercourse is prevented? What if captivity or some force separates them, so that a husband knows that his wife is alive, while access to her is denied him? Do you think the murmurs of the incontinent should be admitted and adulteries permitted? What about the very matter on which the Lord was questioned, and answered that it ought not to be done, but that Moses, because of the hardness of their hearts, permitted a certificate of divorce to be given and a spouse to be put away for any cause? Does not the law of Christ displease the incontinent who wish to cast off, by giving a divorce, wives who are quarrelsome, abusive, domineering, disdainful, and most reluctant to render the conjugal debt, and marry others? Since, then, their incontinence has shuddered at the law of Christ, must the law of Christ be changed at their discretion?

Now, if a wife leaves her husband, or a husband his wife, not because of sexual immorality but rather for the sake of continence, and the one to whom the divorce is given for this reason is incontinent, I ask whether he or she will not be an adulterer or adulteress if joined to another. If it is said that they will not be, the Lord is contradicted, whose words these are: “It was said, ‘Whoever puts away his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say that everyone who puts away his wife, except for the cause of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery; and he who marries a woman put away commits adultery.” Look, she was put away, she did not put away, and since continence belongs to few, she gave in to incontinence and married; and yet an adulterer married an adulteress. Both are guilty, both are to be condemned: she who married while her husband lived, and he who married her whose husband lives. Do we call the law of Christ inhumane here, by which she is declared guilty of so great a crime and punished, whom her husband put away with no prior sexual immorality on her part and, since continence belongs to few, by putting her away compelled to marry? Why do we not say here that he is to be counted as dead who first broke the conjugal bond by wrongly putting her away? For by what reasoning will you say that he broke the conjugal bond who, although an adulterer, did not put away his wife, and that he did not break it who put away even a chaste wife? But I say that this bond remains in both cases, since “a wife is bound as long as her husband lives,” whether he is continent or an adulterer; and therefore she commits adultery who marries after being put away, and he commits adultery who marries a woman put away, whether she was put away by an adulterer or by a continent man, since “a wife is bound as long as her husband lives.” But now we are discussing the complaints of the incontinent. For what complaint seems more just than that of this woman who says, “I was put away, I did not put away; and since continence belongs to few, I did not contain myself. So as not to commit sexual immorality I married; and I am called an adulteress because I married”? Shall we decide that the divine law must be changed because of her seemingly just complaint, so that we do not judge her an adulteress? Far from it. But you will answer that she ought not to have been put away, since no cause of sexual immorality had preceded. You speak the truth; for the Lord declared her husband's sin when he said, “Whoever puts away his wife, except for the cause of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.” But did she not sin by marrying afterwards because he sinned earlier by putting her away? What good does it do the incontinent woman, then, to complain about the law of Christ, except that she is punished while murmuring?

Now let us also look at the things you inserted in another place and wanted me to answer. There you are troubled and feel pity for a man who is compelled, if not by incontinence then certainly by the necessity of begetting children, to sleep with an adulteress, if he is not permitted to put her away in such a way as to marry another while she lives. You would rightly be troubled on this point if it were not adultery to marry another while one's wife, although an adulteress, is alive. But if it is adultery, as what has been argued has shown, why is the begetting of children put forward as a pretext? For license for shameful deeds is not to be permitted on that account. Or is dying without descendants to be avoided as much as living into the hereafter is to be chosen? Adulterers will not be allowed this, since after the first death they must be condemned to the eternity of the second death. For this pretext of begetting children would compel even wives who are not adulteresses but most chaste, if they happen to be barren, to be put away and others married; which I think does not please you.

Therefore, if adulteries are not to be excused on the ground of incontinence, how much less are they excused on the ground of begetting children! It was that weakness, that is, incontinence, which the apostle wished to relieve by the honorable state of marriage. For he does not say, “If she has no children, let her marry,” but, “If she does not contain herself, let her marry.” What is conceded to incontinence by marrying is indeed compensated by the propagation of children. For incontinence is certainly a vice, but marriage is not a vice; and so through this good that evil becomes venial. Since marriage, then, was instituted for the sake of begetting, it was for this reason that it was contracted by the fathers, who had relations with women only for the duty of begetting, but not unlawfully. For there was then a certain necessity of propagation that does not exist now, since there is “a time for embracing,” as it is written, which certainly was then, “and a time to refrain from embracing,” which is now. Speaking of this time the apostle says, “For the rest, brothers, the time is short; it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none.” Hence it is now said with complete certainty, “Let her who can receive it receive it; but let her who does not contain herself marry.” Then, therefore, even continence descended into marriage from the duty of propagating children; but now the nuptial bond relieves the vice of incontinence, so that the propagation of children may come about from those who do not contain themselves, not through the shamefulness of illicit intercourse but through the honorable state of marriage. Why, then, did the apostle not say, “If she has no children, let her marry”? Clearly because in this time of refraining from embracing it is not necessary to propagate children. And why did he say, “If she does not contain herself, let her marry”? Surely lest through incontinence she be driven to commit adultery. If, then, she contains herself, let her neither marry nor beget; but if she does not contain herself, let her marry lawfully, lest she beget shamefully or, more shamefully still, have intercourse without begetting. Although some, even lawfully married, do this last thing I mentioned. For intercourse even with one's lawful wife is unlawful and shameful where the conception of offspring is avoided. This is what Onan, the son of Judah, did, and God killed him for it. The propagation of children, then, is itself the first, natural, and lawful cause of marriage. And therefore those who are joined because of incontinence ought not to temper their evil in such a way as to destroy the good of marriage, that is, the propagation of children. For the apostle was speaking of the incontinent when he said, “I want, then, the younger women to marry, to bear children, to be mothers of families, to give the adversary no occasion for reproach; for some have already turned aside after Satan.” When, then, he said, “I want the younger women to marry,” he was certainly advising this to shore up the collapse of continence. But lest they think only of the weakness of carnal concupiscence, which they would merely serve by the act of marriage, while the good of marriage was either despised or neglected, he at once added, “to bear children, to be mothers of families.” Those who choose to be continent certainly choose something better than the good of marriage, that is, the begetting of children. Hence, if continence is chosen in order to take up something better than the good of marriage, how much more must it be kept in order to avoid adultery! For when the apostle had said, “But if she does not contain herself, let her marry,” he said, “for it is better to marry than to burn”; he did not say, “it is better to commit adultery than to burn.”

There is nothing, then, to which we may exhort those who fear to be reconciled to adulterous spouses healed by repentance except to keep continence; since a wife is bound as long as her husband lives, whether he is an adulterer or chaste, and commits adultery if she marries another; and a husband is bound as long as his wife lives, whether she is an adulteress or chaste, and commits adultery if he marries another. For since this binding is not dissolved even if a spouse is separated from a chaste spouse by divorce, much less is it dissolved if, without being separated, the spouse commits adultery. And therefore nothing dissolves it except the death of a spouse, not falling into adultery but leaving the body. So, if a wife has withdrawn from an adulterous husband and does not wish to be reconciled to him, let her remain unmarried; and if a husband has put away an adulterous wife and does not wish to take her back even after repentance, let him keep continence, if not from the will to choose a better good, then certainly from the necessity of avoiding a deadly evil. I would exhort to this even if a wife were in an incurable and long illness, even if she were bodily separated somewhere her husband could not reach; finally, I would exhort to this even if a wife who wished to live continently, though against discipline, since not by consent, still, chaste herself, put away a chaste husband. For I think no Christian will deny that he is an adulterer who has had relations with another woman while his own wife is long ill or long absent or desiring to live continently. So, too, when an adulteress has been put away, he is an adulterer with another woman, since not this man or that, but “everyone who puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery.” Therefore, if the life of the saints, free from the conjugal bond, is too little desired, let the punishment of adulterers be dreaded, and let concupiscence at least be curbed by fear if continence is not chosen by love. For where there is fear, let labor work; where there was labor, there will also be love. For we must not trust in our own strength; but prayer must be joined to our efforts, so that he who deters us from evils may fill us with good things.

Let us also answer the point where you think husbands are driven to punish adulterous wives without any mercy, since they want them to die if they are not permitted to marry others while those wives live. Wishing to magnify this cruelty, you said, “It does not seem to me, most beloved father, that this is the divine meaning, where kindness and devotion are excluded.” You say this as if husbands ought to spare adulterous wives because they are permitted to marry others, so that, if it is not permitted, they would not spare them, in order that it might be permitted. On the contrary, they ought to show mercy to sinful women for this reason, that they themselves may obtain mercy for their own sins. And this is much more to be done by those who, having put away adulterous wives, wish to live continently. For the more holy they wish to be, the more merciful they ought to be, so that they may be divinely helped to keep chastity in themselves while they do not humanly avenge the chastity violated by their wives. And above all that word of the Lord should be recalled to their memory: “He who is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her”; not “he who is without this sin,” since we are speaking of chaste husbands, but “he who is without sin.” If they say they are, they deceive themselves, and the truth is not in them. But if they do not deceive themselves and the truth is in them, there will be no bloody severity in them. For knowing that they are not without sin, they forgive, so that they may be forgiven, and kindness and devotion are not excluded by them. Rather, these are excluded if it is the license of lust, not the care of devotion, that obtains pardon from them for their wives' sins; that is, if they spare them because they are permitted to marry others, and not rather because they want the Lord to spare them too.