On the Good of Marriage 1–14

Since every human being is a part of the human race, and human nature is something social and possesses a great and natural good, the power of friendship as well, God for this reason willed to create all human beings from one, so that they might be held together in their fellowship not only by likeness of kind but also by the bond of kinship. The first natural bond of human society, then, is husband and wife. God did not create even these two separately and join them as strangers; he created the one from the other, signifying also the force of their union in the side, from which she was taken and formed. For those who walk side by side and look together toward where they are walking are joined at the side. There follows the bond of fellowship in children, which is the one honorable fruit, not of the union of male and female, but of their intercourse. For even without such intercourse there could have been in both sexes a kind of friendly and brotherly union, the one ruling, the other obeying.

There is no need now to investigate and give a definite judgment on the question how the offspring of the first human beings could have come into existence (those whom God had blessed, saying, “Increase and multiply and fill the earth”), if they had not sinned, since their bodies deserved the condition of death by sinning, and there can be no intercourse except of mortal bodies. Many different opinions on this matter have arisen, and if we had to examine which of them best agrees with the truth of the divine Scriptures, it would be a matter for lengthy discussion. It may be that, if they had not sinned, they would have had children in some other way without the embrace of intercourse, by the gift of the almighty Creator, who was able to create them too without parents, who was able to form the flesh of Christ in a virgin's womb, and (to speak now to the unbelievers themselves) who was able to give offspring to bees without intercourse. Or it may be that much in that passage is said mystically and figuratively and must be understood otherwise, where it is written, “Fill the earth and have dominion over it”: namely, that this was to come about by fullness and perfection of life and power, so that the increase and multiplying itself, of which it is said, “Increase and multiply,” is to be understood as advance of mind and abundance of virtue, as is put in the psalm: “You will multiply me in my soul in strength”; and that this succession of offspring was not given to man until afterwards, when, because of sin, there was to be a departure in death. Or it may be that the body of those human beings was made not spiritual but at first animal, so that by the merit of obedience it might afterward become spiritual in order to attain immortality, not after death (which entered the world through the envy of the devil and became the penalty of sin), but through that change which the apostle signifies when he says, “Then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ in the air.” In that case we would understand that the bodies of the first married couple were both mortal by their first formation and yet would not have died had they not sinned, as God had threatened; just as if he had threatened a wound because the body was able to be wounded, which nevertheless would not have happened unless what he had forbidden were done. So, then, even through intercourse there could have been generations of such bodies, which would grow up to a certain measure and yet not decline into old age, or would reach old age but not death, until the earth was filled by that multiplication of the blessing. For if God granted to the clothes of the Israelites to keep their proper state for forty years without any damage, how much more would he grant to the bodies of those who obeyed his command a most happy balance of settled condition, until they were changed into something better, not by death, by which the body is abandoned by the soul, but by a blessed change from mortality to immortality, from an animal to a spiritual quality! Which of these opinions is true, or whether another or others can still be drawn out of those words, would take long to inquire and discuss.

What we now say is that, according to this condition of birth and death which we know and in which we were created, the marriage of male and female is something good. The divine Scripture so commends this covenant that a woman put away by her husband may not marry another as long as her husband lives, nor may a man put away by his wife take another unless the one who departed has died. So it is right to ask why the good of marriage, which the Lord also confirmed in the gospel, not only because he forbade putting away a wife except for the cause of sexual immorality, but also because he came when invited to a wedding, is a good. It seems to me that it is not only because of the procreation of children, but also because of the natural companionship itself between the two sexes. Otherwise it would no longer be called a marriage in the case of old people, especially if they had lost their children or had never had any. But as it is, in a good marriage, even a long one, though the heat of youth between male and female has withered, the order of charity between husband and wife still flourishes; and the better they are, the sooner they have begun by mutual consent to abstain from carnal intercourse, not so that it should be a matter of necessity later that they could not do what they wished, but so that it should be a matter of praise that they first did not wish what they could do. If, then, faithfulness in the honor and services owed to one another is kept by each sex, even when the limbs of both grow feeble and almost corpse-like, the chastity of souls rightly joined in marriage endures, the purer the more tested, the more secure the more peaceful. Marriages have this good as well: carnal or youthful incontinence, even though it is faulty, is brought to the honorable purpose of begetting offspring, so that conjugal union makes something good out of the evil of lust. Further, the concupiscence of the flesh is restrained and burns in a more modest way, since parental affection tempers it. For a certain seriousness enters into burning pleasure when, in cleaving to one another, husband and wife think of being father and mother.

Add to this that in the very act of rendering the marital debt to one another, even if they seek it somewhat too intemperately and incontinently, spouses still owe each other faithfulness equally. To this faithfulness the apostle gives so much right that he called it power, saying, “The woman does not have power over her own body, but the husband; likewise also the husband does not have power over his own body, but the wife.” The violation of this faithfulness is called adultery, when, either at the prompting of one's own lust or by consenting to another's, one lies with another man or another woman against the marriage covenant. And so faithfulness is broken, which, even in bodily and base things, is a great good of the soul; and therefore it is certain that it ought to be put before even bodily safety, by which this life itself is maintained. For although a little straw is almost nothing compared with much gold, faithfulness, when kept sincerely in a transaction over straw as in one over gold, is not less because it is kept in a lesser thing. But when faithfulness is employed to commit a sin, it is strange that it should be called faithfulness; yet whatever it is, if one acts even against it, one acts worse, unless it is abandoned in order to return to true and lawful faithfulness, that is, so that the sin may be corrected by amending the depravity of the will. Suppose someone, unable to rob a man alone, finds a partner in wickedness and agrees with him to do it together and share the plunder, and then, the crime committed, carries off the whole himself. The other grieves and complains that faith was not kept with him; yet in his very complaint he ought rather to consider that faith should have been kept with human society itself by a good life, so that no one would be unjustly plundered, if he feels how unjustly it was not kept with himself in a partnership of sin. The first, being faithless on both sides, must certainly be judged the more wicked. But if what they had done wrongly had displeased him, and for that reason he had refused to divide the plunder with his partner in crime so that it could be returned to the man from whom it was taken, not even the faithless man would call him faithless. So a woman who, having violated her marriage faithfulness, keeps faith with the adulterer is certainly wicked; but if she does not keep faith even with the adulterer, she is worse. But if she repents of the shameful deed, returns to conjugal chastity, and breaks off the adulterous agreements and arrangements, I would be surprised if even the adulterer himself should consider her a violator of faith.

It is also often asked whether it should be called a marriage when a man and a woman, he not the husband nor she the wife of another, come together not to propagate children but, out of incontinence, for the sake of intercourse alone, with this pledge between them, that he will not do this with another woman nor she with another man. Perhaps it may not absurdly be called a marriage, if they agree to this between them until the death of one of them, and if, although they did not come together for that reason, they have not avoided the begetting of offspring, either by not wanting children to be born to them or even by acting with some evil means to prevent their birth. But if both or either of these conditions is lacking, I do not see how we can call this a marriage. For if a man takes a woman to himself for a time, until he finds another worthy of his rank or wealth to marry as his equal, he is an adulterer in his very intention, and not with the one he wishes to find, but with the one he lies with in such a way that he has no marital partnership with her. Hence she too, knowing and willing this, certainly has unchaste relations with a man with whom she has no wifely covenant. Yet if she keeps faith with his bed, and when he has taken a wife does not think of marrying herself but prepares to abstain entirely from such activity, I would perhaps not readily dare to call her an adulteress; yet who would say she does not sin, when he knows that she has relations with a man whose wife she is not? But if from that intercourse, as far as she is concerned, she wants nothing but children, and whatever she undergoes beyond the purpose of procreation she undergoes unwillingly, she is indeed to be preferred to many married women, who, though they are not adulteresses, often compel their husbands, even when these wish to abstain, to render the carnal debt, not from desire for offspring but from the heat of concupiscence, using their own right intemperately. Yet in their marriages this very thing is good, that they are married. For they married so that concupiscence, brought under a lawful bond, might not float about deformed and dissolute, having of itself the unbridled weakness of the flesh, but from marriage the indissoluble fellowship of faithfulness; of itself the drive to unrestrained intercourse, from marriage the measure of chaste procreation. For even if it is shameful to use even a husband lustfully, it is honorable to be willing to have relations only with a husband and to bear children only by a husband. There are also men so incontinent that they do not spare their wives even when pregnant. Whatever immodest, shameless, or sordid thing married people do with each other is the vice of the persons, not the fault of marriage.

Even in the more immoderate demand for the carnal debt, which the apostle grants to them not by way of command but by way of concession (so that they may have relations even apart from the purpose of procreation), even if depraved habits drive them to such intercourse, marriage still defends them from adultery or sexual immorality. For that is not committed because of marriage, but it is pardoned because of marriage. Spouses therefore owe each other not only the faithfulness of their sexual union for the procreation of children, which is the first fellowship of the human race in this mortality, but also a kind of mutual service of bearing with each other's weakness in order to avoid unlawful intercourse, so that even if perpetual continence pleases one of them, he or she may not practice it without the other's consent. For this is why “the wife does not have power over her own body, but the husband; likewise the husband does not have power over his own body, but the wife”: so that what either he seeks from marriage or she from her husband, not for the sake of procreating children but out of weakness and incontinence, they may not refuse each other, lest through this they fall into damnable corruptions, Satan tempting them because of the incontinence of both or of either. Marital intercourse for the sake of begetting has no fault; for satisfying concupiscence, but still with one's spouse, it has a venial fault, because of the faithfulness of the marriage bed; but adultery or sexual immorality has a deadly fault. And so continence from all intercourse is indeed better even than marital intercourse itself that takes place for the sake of begetting. But since that continence is of greater merit, while rendering the conjugal debt is no crime, demanding it beyond the need of begetting is a venial fault, and committing sexual immorality or adultery is a crime to be punished, conjugal charity must take care that, while seeking for itself the means of greater honor, it does not give its spouse the means of damnation. For “whoever puts away his wife, except for the cause of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.” So far is that nuptial covenant, once entered, a matter of a certain sacrament, that it is not made void even by separation; for while her husband lives, even the one by whom she was left, she commits adultery if she marries another, and he who left her is the cause of this evil.

I wonder, however, whether, just as it is permitted to put away an adulterous wife, so, having put her away, it is permitted to marry another. For holy Scripture makes a difficult knot on this matter, since the apostle says, by the Lord's command, that a woman ought not to depart from her husband, but if she departs, she should remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband; whereas she ought not to depart and remain unmarried except from an adulterous husband, lest by departing from one who is not an adulterer she make him commit adultery. But she may rightly be reconciled to her husband, either by bearing with him, if she cannot contain herself, or perhaps after he has been corrected. But I do not see how the husband can have freedom to marry another if he has left an adulterous wife, when the wife is not free to marry another if she has left an adulterous husband. If this is so, the social bond of spouses is so strong that, though it is tied for the sake of procreation, it is not loosed even for the sake of procreation. For a man could put away a barren wife and marry one by whom he might have children, and yet it is not permitted; and in our times, at least, and by Roman custom, he may not even take a second wife in addition, so as to have more than one living. And certainly, if an adulterous wife or husband were left, more human beings could be born, if she married another or he married another woman. Yet if this is not permitted, as the divine rule seems to prescribe, whom would it not make attentive to ask what such great firmness of the conjugal bond means? I do not think it could have such force unless some sacrament of something greater were applied from this weak mortality of human beings, which would remain unshaken for those who abandon it and wish to dissolve it, to their punishment; since, even when divorce intervenes, that nuptial covenant is not abolished, so that they remain spouses to each other even when separated, and commit adultery with those to whom they are joined even after their divorce, whether she with a man or he with a woman. Yet only “in the city of our God, in his holy mountain” is this the case with a wife. For who does not know that the laws of the gentiles are otherwise? There, when a divorce has been given, without any liability to human penalty, she marries whom she will and he marries whom he will. Moses seems to have permitted something similar to this custom, because of the hardness of the Israelites, concerning the certificate of divorce; and in this matter a reproach of divorce appears rather than an approval of it.

“Marriage, then, is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled.” We do not call this good in the sense that it is good in comparison with sexual immorality; otherwise there will be two evils, one worse than the other. Or else sexual immorality will be good, because adultery is worse (for it is worse to violate another's marriage than to cling to a prostitute), and adultery good, because incest is worse (for it is worse to lie with one's mother than with another man's wife), and so on until we come to the things which, as the apostle says, it is shameful even to speak of, all will be good in comparison with worse. But who doubts that this is false? Marriage and sexual immorality, then, are not two evils, one worse than the other; rather marriage and continence are two goods, one better than the other; just as this temporal health and infirmity are not two evils, one worse, but this health and immortality are two goods, one better. Likewise knowledge and vanity are not two evils, of which vanity is the worse, but knowledge and charity are two goods, of which charity is the better. For “knowledge will be destroyed,” says the apostle, and yet it is necessary for this time; “but charity never fails.” So also this mortal generation, for the sake of which marriages take place, will be destroyed; but freedom from all intercourse is an angelic practice even here and remains forever. Just as the meals of the righteous are better than the fasts of the sacrilegious, so the marriages of the faithful are to be placed before the virginity of the ungodly. Yet in the one case it is not the meal that is preferred to fasting but righteousness to sacrilege, and in the other not marriage to virginity but faith to ungodliness. For the righteous eat, when there is need, so that, like good masters, they may give their servant bodies what is just and fair; but the sacrilegious fast so that they may serve demons. So the faithful marry so as to be chastely joined to husbands, but ungodly women are virgins so as to commit fornication away from the true God. Just as, then, what Martha did, busy with serving the saints, was good, but what Mary her sister did, sitting at the Lord's feet and hearing his word, was better; so we praise the good of Susanna in conjugal chastity, but still place before it the good of the widow Anna, and much more that of the virgin Mary. It was good that the women did who ministered to Christ and his disciples what they needed from their own means; but better that of those who left all their means in order to follow the same Lord more freely. In both these pairs of goods, whether what these did or what Martha and Mary did, the better could not be done unless the other was passed over or left behind. Hence it must be understood that marriage is not therefore to be thought evil because, unless one abstains from it, widowed chastity or virginal integrity cannot be had. For what Martha did was not evil because, unless her sister abstained from it, she would not do what was better; nor is it evil to receive a righteous man or a prophet into one's house, because one who wishes to follow Christ to perfection ought not even to have a house, so that he may do what is better.

We must of course observe that God gives us some goods that are to be sought for their own sake, such as wisdom, health, friendship; and others that are necessary for the sake of something else, such as learning, food, drink, sleep, marriage, intercourse. Some of these are necessary for the sake of wisdom, such as learning; some for the sake of health, such as food, drink, and sleep; some for the sake of friendship, such as marriage or intercourse, for from this the propagation of the human race subsists, in which friendly fellowship is a great good. Whoever, then, does not use these goods, which are necessary for the sake of something else, for the purpose for which they were instituted, sins, sometimes venially, sometimes damnably. But whoever uses them for the purpose for which they were given does well. The one, therefore, for whom they are not necessary does better if he does not use them. So, when we need these goods, we rightly want them; but it is better not to want them than to want them, because we are in a better state when we do not need them. And so it is good to marry, because it is good to beget children, to be a mother of a family; but it is better not to marry, because it is better not to need this work for human society itself. For the human race is now in such a state that, since others who do not contain themselves are occupied not only in marriage but many also run riot in unlawful intercourse, and the good Creator makes something good out of their evils, there is no lack of numerous offspring and abundant succession, from which holy friendships may be gathered. From this it follows that in the first times of the human race, chiefly for the propagation of the people of God, through whom the prince and savior of all peoples would be both prophesied and born, the saints had to use this good of marriage, not as sought for its own sake but as necessary for something else. But now, since from every side and from all nations an abundance of spiritual kinship overflows for entering a holy and sincere fellowship, even those who wish to join in marriage only for the sake of children should be urged to make use rather of the greater good of continence.

But I know what they mutter. “What if,” they say, “all human beings wanted to abstain from all intercourse? How would the human race survive?” Would that all wanted this, provided only that it were “in charity, from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned”! The city of God would be filled much sooner, and the end of the age would be hastened. For what else does the apostle evidently urge when he says, speaking of this, “I would that all were as I myself am”? Or in that place: “But this I say, brothers: the time is short; it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who weep as though they did not weep, and those who rejoice as though they did not rejoice, and those who buy as though they did not buy, and those who use this world as though they did not use it; for the form of this world is passing away. I want you to be without anxiety.” Then he adds: “He who is without a wife thinks of the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he who is joined in marriage thinks of the things of the world, how he may please his wife. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are divided: she who is unmarried is anxious about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit; but she who is married is anxious about the things of the world, how she may please her husband.” Hence it seems to me that at this time only those who do not contain themselves ought to marry, according to that saying of the same apostle: “But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn.”

Yet not even for them is marriage a sin. If it were chosen in comparison with sexual immorality, it would be a lesser sin than sexual immorality, but still a sin. But as it is, what shall we say against the most evident voice of the apostle, who says, “Let him do what he wishes; he does not sin, let him marry,” and, “If you take a wife, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she does not sin”? From this, surely, it is no longer lawful to doubt that marriage is not a sin. So the apostle does not grant marriage by way of pardon (for who would doubt that it is most absurd to say that those to whom pardon is given have not sinned?), but he grants by way of pardon that intercourse which takes place through incontinence, not for the sake of procreation alone and sometimes with no purpose of procreation at all; which marriage does not cause to happen but obtains pardon for, provided it is not so excessive as to hinder the times that ought to be set aside for prayer, and is not changed into that use which is against nature, about which the apostle could not keep silent when he spoke of the corruptions of utterly unclean and ungodly men. For intercourse necessary for begetting is blameless, and it alone is properly nuptial. But that which goes beyond this necessity no longer obeys reason but lust. And yet not to demand this but to render it to one's spouse, lest he or she sin damnably by sexual immorality, belongs to the married person. But if both are subject to such concupiscence, they do something that plainly does not belong to marriage. Yet if in their union they love what is honorable more than what is dishonorable, that is, what belongs to marriage more than what does not, this is granted to them by way of pardon on the apostle's authority. For this fault they do not have marriage as an encourager but as an intercessor, provided they do not turn God's mercy away from themselves, either by not abstaining on certain days so as to be free for prayer, and by this abstinence, as by fasts, to commend their prayers, or by changing the natural use into the use that is against nature, which is done more damnably with a spouse.

For while that natural use, when it slips beyond the marriage compact, that is, beyond the need of propagation, is venial in a wife and damnable in a prostitute, the use which is against nature is done abominably with a prostitute, but more abominably with a wife. So great is the force of the Creator's ordinance and of the order of creation that in things granted for use, even when the measure is exceeded, it is far more tolerable than even a single or rare excess in things that have not been granted. And therefore a spouse's immoderation in a thing that is granted must be borne with, lest lust break out into what is not granted. Hence also a man sins far less by being however frequently with his wife than by going even very rarely to commit sexual immorality. But when a husband wishes to use a member of the woman not granted for this, the wife is more shameful if she allows it to be done in herself than in another woman. The honor of marriage, then, is the chastity of procreating and faithfulness in rendering the carnal debt: this is the work of marriage, this the apostle defends from all charge by saying, “If you take a wife, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she does not sin,” and, “Let him do what he wishes; he does not sin, let him marry.” But a more immoderate advance in demanding the debt, by either sex, is granted to spouses by way of pardon, for the reasons he gave above.

When, then, he says, “She who is unmarried thinks of the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit,” this is not to be taken as if we were to think that a chaste Christian wife is not holy in body. For it was said to all the faithful: “Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” The bodies of married people, then, who keep faith with each other and with the Lord, are also holy. And the same apostle testifies that not even an unbelieving spouse stands in the way of the holiness of either of them, but rather that the holiness of the wife benefits an unbelieving husband, or the holiness of the husband benefits an unbelieving wife, when he says, “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the brother.” Accordingly, that saying refers to the greater holiness of unmarried women than of married, to which a greater reward is also due, in proportion as that good is better than this one, since she thinks only of this, how she may please the Lord. For it is not that a believing woman who keeps conjugal modesty does not think how she may please the Lord; but she certainly does so less, because she also thinks of the things of the world, how she may please her husband. This is what he meant to say of them: that from the necessity of marriage they may in some way have to think of the things of the world, how they may please their husbands.

Whether he said this of all married women, or of such as are so many that they might be thought almost all, may reasonably be doubted. For neither does what he says of unmarried women, “She who is unmarried thinks of the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit,” apply to all unmarried women, since there are some widows who are dead while living in pleasures. Nevertheless, as regards a certain distinction and, as it were, the proper character of unmarried and married women, just as a woman is greatly to be detested who abstains from marriage, that is, from a thing permitted, but does not abstain from the faults of luxury or pride or curiosity and talkativeness, so a married woman is rare who, even in her very service to her husband, thinks of nothing but how to please God, adorning herself “not with braided hair or gold and pearls and costly clothing, but as befits women who profess godliness, by good conduct.” The apostle Peter also describes such marriages in his instructions. “Likewise,” he says, “let women be obedient to their husbands, so that, even if some do not believe the word, they may be won without a word through the conduct of the wife, seeing your fear and chaste conduct; so that they may not be those who are adorned outwardly with the curling of hair or surrounded with gold or with fine clothing, but that hidden man of your heart, in that incorruptibility of a quiet and modest spirit, which is rich in the Lord's sight. For so certain holy women who hoped in the Lord adorned themselves, being obedient to their husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord; whose daughters you have become, doing good and not fearing any vain fear. Husbands, in the same way, live in harmony and chastely with your wives, and give honor to them as to the weaker and subject vessel, as fellow heirs of grace, and see that your prayers are not hindered.” Do such marriages, then, not think of the things of the Lord, how they may please the Lord? But they are very rare (who denies it?), and in that very rarity almost all who are such were not joined in order to be such, but became such when already joined.