On Marriage and Concupiscence 0.1–1.15

Since I had long been troubled that I had written several times and had received no reply from your Sublimity, I suddenly received three letters from your Kindness: one, not addressed to me alone, by my fellow bishop Vindemialis, and not long afterward two by my fellow presbyter Firmus. This holy man, joined to us, as you could learn from him, by a most intimate love, talked much with us about your Excellency and told us truthfully what kind of man he knows you to be in the heart of Christ; and so he surpassed not only the letters that the bishop I mentioned, or he himself, brought, but even those we complained we had not received. His account of you was all the sweeter to us because he told us things that you yourself could not write back, even if I asked, lest you become the herald of your own praises, which holy Scripture forbids. Yet I too am afraid to write these things to you, lest I incur the suspicion of flattery, my illustrious lord, deservedly most eminent, and son most dear in the love of Christ.

Consider, then, what delight and joy it was for me to hear your praises in Christ, or rather the praises of Christ in you, from one who could neither deceive me, because of his faithfulness, nor be ignorant of them, because of his friendship with you. But we have also heard other things from others, though not so many or so certain: how sound and catholic your faith is, how devout your expectation of the things to come, what love you have for God and the brothers; how you do not think proudly in your high honors nor hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, and are rich in good works; how your house is a rest and comfort for the saints and a terror to the ungodly; how great your care is that no one, covered with the veil of Christ's name, should lie in wait for the members of Christ, whether among his old enemies or his more recent ones; and how you provide for the salvation of those same enemies while being hostile to their error. These things and the like, as I said, we are used to hearing from others too; but now, through the brother mentioned above, we have learned more of them, and on better witness.

But as for your conjugal chastity, so that we might praise and love it in you as well, from whom could we have heard of it except from someone close to you and of your household, who knew your life not on the surface but through and through? It delights me, then, to speak with you somewhat more intimately and at somewhat greater length about this good of yours, which is God's gift. I know that I am no burden to you if I send something long, since by reading it you are with us the longer. For I have learned this too: that amid your many great cares you read easily and gladly, and take great delight in our little works, even those we have written to others, if any of them have been able to come into your hands. How much more will you deign to attend closely to what is written to you, where I speak as though you were present, and to receive it the more gladly! From this letter, then, go on to the book that I have sent with it, which will itself, in its opening, more fittingly make known to your Reverence both why it was written and why it was sent to you in particular.

New heretics, my dearly beloved son Valerius, who contend that the medicine of Christ, by which sins are healed, is not necessary for little children born in the flesh, cry out against us with the utmost malice that we condemn marriage and the divine work by which God creates human beings from males and females. They do so because we say that those who are born of such intercourse contract original sin, of which the apostle says, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed through to all men, in whom all sinned”; and because we do not deny that they, of whatever parents they are born, are still under the devil unless they are reborn in Christ and, rescued by his grace from the power of darkness, are transferred into the kingdom of him who willed not to be born of that same intercourse of the two sexes. Because we say this, then, which is contained in the most ancient and most firm rule of the catholic faith, these champions of a novel and perverse doctrine, who say that there is no sin in little children to be washed away by the bath of regeneration, faithlessly or ignorantly slander us, as if we condemned marriage, and as if we said that the work of God, that is, the human being who is born of it, is the work of the devil. They do not notice that the good of marriage can no more be accused because of the original evil that is contracted from it than the evil of adulteries and acts of sexual immorality can be excused because of the natural good that is born of them. For just as sin, whether contracted by little children from the one or from the other, is the work of the devil, so a human being, whether born from the one or from the other, is the work of God. The purpose of this book, therefore, is this: that, so far as the Lord deigns to help us, we may distinguish from the goodness of marriage the evil of carnal concupiscence, because of which a human being born through it contracts original sin. For this shameful concupiscence, which is shamelessly praised by shameless men, would not exist had man not sinned first; but marriage would exist even if no one had sinned, for the sowing of children would then have taken place in the body of that life without this disease, without which it cannot now take place in the body of this death.

I wished to write to you in particular about this subject for three chief reasons, which I will state briefly. The first is that, by the gift of Christ, you keep conjugal chastity with great care; the second, that you have effectively resisted, by your power in attending to the matter and pressing it, these profane novelties that we resist here by argument; the third, that I learned that something they had written had come into your hands, and though you laughed at it with the most robust faith, it is still good that we should also know how to give help in defending what we believe. For the apostle Peter commands us to be ready to make our defense to everyone who asks us for a reason for our faith and hope; and the apostle Paul says, “Let your speech be seasoned with salt in grace, so that you may know how you ought to answer each one.” These are chiefly the things that compelled me to hold with you, in this volume, such discourse as the Lord would deign to give. For it has never pleased me to thrust any of my little works, not so much diligently as impudently, upon an illustrious man who has not asked for it, conspicuous in so high a rank as you are, especially one who is not yet enjoying a dignity of leisure but is still occupied in public affairs, and military ones at that. If, then, I have now done something of the kind, graciously pardon it for the reasons I have mentioned, and turn a kindly mind to what follows.

Blessed Paul shows that conjugal chastity also is a gift of God when, speaking of this subject, he says: “But I would that all men were as I myself am; but each has his own gift from God, one in this way, another in that.” See, he said that this too is a gift from God; though lower than that continence in which he wanted all to be as he himself was, it is nevertheless a gift from God. From this we understand that when these things are commanded to be done, nothing else is shown than that we ought to have our own will too for receiving and keeping them; but when they are shown to be gifts of God, we learn from whom they must be sought if we do not have them, and to whom thanks must be given if we have them, and that our wills avail little for seeking, taking up, and keeping them unless they are helped by God.

What, then, do we say when conjugal chastity is found even in some ungodly people? Are they to be said to sin in this, that they use a gift of God badly, not referring it to the worship of him from whom they received it? Or are these things perhaps not even to be thought gifts of God when unbelievers do them, according to the apostle's statement, “Everything that is not of faith is sin”? But who would dare to say that sin is a gift of God? For the soul and the body, and whatever goods of soul and body are naturally implanted, are gifts of God even in sinners, since God made them, not they themselves; but it was of the things they do that it was said, “Everything that is not of faith is sin.” When, therefore, people without faith do the things that seem to belong to conjugal chastity, whether seeking to please human beings, themselves or others, or avoiding human troubles in the things they desire viciously, or serving demons, sins are not restrained; rather, some sins are overcome by other sins. Far be it, then, that anyone should truly be called chaste who keeps marital faithfulness to his wife for any reason other than the true God.

The union of male and female for the sake of begetting, then, is the natural good of marriage. But he uses this good badly who uses it like a beast, so that his aim is the pleasure of lust, not the will to offspring. Yet in some animals without reason, as in most birds, a kind of confederation of pairs is kept, and a shared skill in building nests, with the times for warming the eggs divided between them and the tasks of feeding the young taken in turn, so that when they mate they seem rather to be about the business of continuing their kind than of satisfying lust. Of these two, the former is in the beast a likeness of man; the latter is in man a likeness of the beast. But as for what I said belongs to the nature of marriage—that male and female are joined in a partnership for begetting and so do not defraud each other, as every partnership by nature does not want a fraudulent partner—this evident good, when unbelievers have it, they turn into evil and sin, because they use it unfaithfully. In the same way, then, the marriages of believers turn to the use of righteousness even that concupiscence of the flesh by which the flesh lusts against the spirit. For they intend to beget children who will be regenerated, so that those who are born of them as children of the world may be reborn as children of God. Therefore those who do not beget children with this intention, this will, this end—that they may transfer them from being members of the first man into being members of Christ—but, as unbelieving parents, glory in unbelieving offspring, do not have true conjugal chastity, even if they are so observant that they lie together only for the procreation of children, as the marriage contract states. For since chastity is a virtue, to which the contrary vice is unchastity, and all virtues, even those that act through the body, dwell in the mind, how can the body be asserted with true reason to be chaste when the mind itself prostitutes itself away from the true God? This prostitution the holy psalm accuses, where it says: “For behold, those who put themselves far from you shall perish; you have destroyed everyone who prostitutes himself away from you.” True chastity, therefore, whether conjugal, widowed, or virginal, is not to be so called unless it is devoted to the true faith. For since consecrated virginity is rightly preferred to marriage, what Christian of sober mind would not set Christian catholic married women, even those who have married more than once, above not only the Vestals but also heretical virgins? So great is the power of faith, of which the apostle says, “Everything that is not of faith is sin,” and of which it is also written to the Hebrews, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”

Since this is so, those surely err who think that marriage is condemned when carnal lust is blamed, as though this disease came from marriage and not from sin. Were not those first spouses, whose marriage God blessed, saying, “Increase and multiply,” naked and not ashamed? Why, then, did shame arise from those members after sin, unless because an indecent motion appeared there that marriage would without doubt not have had if human beings had not sinned? Or perhaps, as some think because they do not attend carefully enough to what they read, were the first human beings created blind, like dogs, and—what is more absurd—did they gain sight not, like dogs, by growing, but by sinning? Far be it from us to believe this. What moves those who think so is the passage: “Taking of its fruit she ate; and she gave to her husband with her, and they ate. And the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” From this, people of little understanding suppose that their eyes had been closed before, since divine Scripture testifies that they were then opened. But did Hagar, Sarah's maidservant, have her eyes closed before, when, as her son thirsted and wept, she opened her eyes and saw a well? Or were those two disciples walking on the road with the Lord after his resurrection with their eyes closed, those of whom the gospel says that in the breaking of the bread their eyes were opened and they recognized him? What is written of the first human beings, then, “the eyes of both were opened,” we must understand as meaning that they were made attentive to observe and recognize the new thing that had happened in their body—a body that lay before their open eyes every day, naked and well known. Otherwise, how could Adam, with his eyes closed, give names to all the beasts of the earth and the birds that were brought to him, which he could not do without distinguishing them, and could not distinguish them without seeing them? How, finally, was the woman herself shown to him, when he said, “This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”? Lastly, if anyone is so contentious as to say that he could have done these things not by seeing but by touching, what will he say about what we read there, that the woman saw the tree from which she was about to take the forbidden food, how beautiful it was to the eyes to look upon? They were therefore naked and not ashamed, not because they did not see, but because they had felt nothing in the members they saw that could make them ashamed. For it was not said, “They were both naked and did not know it,” but “they were not ashamed.” For since nothing had gone before that was not permitted, nothing had followed that would cause shame.

There man, having first transgressed God's law, began to have in his members another law warring against his mind, and he felt the evil of his own disobedience when he found the disobedience of his flesh most justly paid back to him. For the serpent too, in seducing him, had promised such an opening of the eyes—for knowing, that is, something that would better have remained unknown. Then indeed man felt in himself what he had done; then he distinguished evil from good, not by being without it but by suffering it. For it was unjust that he who had not obeyed his Lord should be obeyed by his servant, that is, by his own body. For why is it that the eyes, lips, tongue, hands, and feet, and the bending of the back, neck, and sides, are placed within our power, so that they are moved to the tasks suited to them when our body is free of impediments and healthy, yet when it comes to the begetting of children, the members created for this work do not serve the nod of the will, but one must wait for lust to move them as though by its own right—and sometimes it does not do so when the mind wills, while sometimes it does so even against its will? Should not the freedom of the human will blush at this, that by despising God who commanded it, it had lost its proper command even over its own members? Where could it be more fittingly shown that human nature was depraved as the desert of disobedience than in these disobedient parts, from which that very nature subsists by succession? For that is why these parts of the body are properly called by the name of nature. When, therefore, those first human beings had felt in their flesh this motion, indecent because disobedient, and had blushed at their nakedness, they covered these members with fig leaves, so that what was not moved at the will of those who willed might at least be veiled at the will of those who were ashamed; and since what gave indecent pleasure made them ashamed, what was decent might be done by covering it.

Because the good of marriage could not perish even with this evil added to it, imprudent people think that this is not an evil but belongs to that good. But the two are distinguished not only by subtle reasoning but also by the most common natural judgment, which both appeared in those first human beings and is held today by married people. For what they afterward did in propagation is the good of marriage; but what they first covered in confusion is the evil of concupiscence, which everywhere avoids being seen and in its shame seeks privacy. Therefore marriage glories because it makes something good even out of that evil, and blushes because it cannot happen without it. It is as if someone with an injured foot should reach some good even by limping: neither is the arrival bad because of the evil of the limping, nor is the limping good because of the good of the arrival. So we ought neither to condemn marriage because of the evil of lust nor to praise lust because of the good of marriage.

This, indeed, is the disease of which the apostle speaks, addressing married believers too: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the disease of desire, like the Gentiles who do not know God.” Not only, then, should a married believer not use another's vessel, as those do who covet other men's wives, but he should know that not even his own is to be possessed in the disease of carnal concupiscence. This is not to be understood as though the apostle had forbidden conjugal intercourse, that is, lawful and honorable intercourse; but that this intercourse—which would have had no morbid lust attached to it if the freedom of the will had not perished in it through a preceding sin, and which now has it attached—should be a matter not of will but of necessity, without which, however, the fruit of the will itself cannot be reached in procreating children. In the marriages of believers this will is not directed to the end that children should be born who will pass away in this world, but that they may be reborn to remain forever in Christ. If this comes about, the reward of the marriage will be full happiness; if it does not, the spouses will have the peace of a good will. Whoever possesses his vessel, that is, his wife, with this intention of heart surely does not possess her in the disease of desire, like the Gentiles who do not know God, but in sanctification and honor, like the believers who hope in God. For a man uses that evil of concupiscence and is not overcome by it when he bridles and restrains it as it seethes with disordered and unseemly motions, and does not slacken the rein and employ it except in providing for offspring, so that he may beget carnally those who are to be regenerated spiritually, not so as to subject the spirit to the flesh in sordid slavery. No Christian ought to doubt that the holy fathers from Abraham and before Abraham, to whom God bears witness that they pleased him, used their wives in this way, since some of them were even allowed to have several each, where the reason was the multiplication of offspring, not a desire for varied pleasure.

For if the God of our fathers, who is our God too, had not been displeased by that multitude of wives on the ground that lust might thereby vaunt itself more freely, then holy women too would each have served several men. But if any woman did so, what would drive her to have several husbands except the foulness of concupiscence, since by this license she would not have more children? Yet that it belongs more to the good of marriage to be one man and one woman, not one and many, is sufficiently shown by the very first union of spouses, made by God, so that marriages should take their beginning where the more honorable example would be seen. But as the human race advanced, good women were joined to certain good men, several to each. From this it appears that the one arrangement sought rather the moderation of dignity, and the other was permitted by the nature of fruitfulness. For by nature one can more readily rule over many than many over one. Nor can it be doubted that by the natural order men rule over women rather than women over men. Keeping this, the apostle says, “The head of the woman is the man,” and, “Wives, be subject to your husbands”; and the apostle Peter says, “As Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord.” Although this is so—that the nature of rule loves singularity, while we more readily see plurality among those who are subject—nevertheless several women would never lawfully have been joined to one man unless more children were born as a result. Hence if one woman lies with several men, since this brings her no multiplication of offspring but only frequency of lust, she cannot be a wife, but a harlot.

Since, indeed, not only fruitfulness, whose fruit is in offspring, and not only chastity, whose bond is faithfulness, but also a certain sacrament of marriage is commended to married believers—which is why the apostle says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church”—the reality of this sacrament is without doubt that male and female, joined in marriage, persevere inseparably as long as they live, and that it is not lawful for spouse to be separated from spouse except for the cause of sexual immorality. For this is kept in Christ and the church: that the living one with the living one is separated by no divorce for eternity. So great is the observance of this sacrament in the city of our God, on his holy mountain, that is, in the church of Christ, among all married believers, who are without doubt members of Christ, that although women marry, and wives are taken, for the sake of procreating children, it is not lawful to leave even a barren spouse in order to marry another who is fruitful. If anyone does this, he is guilty of adultery—not by the law of this world, where, once a repudiation has intervened, it is allowed without any charge to contract other marriages with others (as the Lord testifies that even holy Moses permitted the Israelites because of the hardness of their hearts), but by the law of the gospel; and so is she too, if she marries another. So fully do the rights of marriage, once entered into, remain between the living that those who have been separated from each other are still spouses to each other rather than to those to whom they have joined themselves. For they would not be adulterers with the others unless they remained spouses to each other. Finally, when the husband with whom there was a true marriage has died, a true marriage can take place with the man with whom there was adultery before. So there remains between the living something conjugal that neither separation nor union with another can take away. But it remains to the harm of guilt, not to the bond of the covenant, just as the soul of an apostate, withdrawing as it were from marriage with Christ, does not lose the sacrament of faith that it received in the bath of regeneration, even when faith is lost. For it would without doubt be given back to him on his return if he had lost it on departing. But he who has withdrawn has it to the heaping up of punishment, not to the merit of reward.

But for those who have agreed by consent to abstain for ever from the use of carnal concupiscence, far be it that the conjugal bond between them should be broken. Rather, it will be the firmer, the more they have entered into pledges with each other that must be kept more lovingly and harmoniously, not by the voluptuous couplings of bodies but by the voluntary affections of minds. For it was not falsely that the angel said to Joseph, “Do not be afraid to take Mary your wife.” She is called his wife from the first pledge of betrothal, though he had not known her by intercourse and was not going to know her; nor had the name of wife perished or remained false where there had been, and was to be, no mingling of flesh. That virgin was indeed all the more holily and wonderfully pleasing to her husband because she was fruitful even without a husband: unequal to him in offspring, equal to him in faithfulness. Because of this faithful marriage both deserved to be called the parents of Christ: not only she his mother but also he his father, as the husband of his mother—both in mind, not in flesh. Yet whether he was father in mind alone, or she mother in the flesh as well, both were parents of his lowliness, not of his loftiness; of his weakness, not of his divinity. For the gospel does not lie where we read, “And his father and mother were marveling at the things said about him,” and in another place, “And his parents went to Jerusalem every year”; and again a little later, “And his mother said to him, ‘Son, why have you done so to us? See, your father and I were seeking you in sorrow.’” But he, to show that besides them he had a Father who begot him without a mother, answered them, “Why is it that you were seeking me? Did you not know that I must be in the things that are my Father's?” And again, lest he be thought to have denied them as his parents by this saying, the evangelist went on to add, “And they did not understand the word that he spoke to them. And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject to them.” Subject to whom, if not to his parents? And who was subject, if not Jesus Christ, who, “though he was in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God”? Why, then, was he subject to those who were far below the form of God, unless because “he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,” the form of which they were the parents? But since she bore him without his sowing seed, surely they would not both have been parents even of that form of a servant unless they had been spouses to each other even without the mingling of flesh. Hence also the series of generations, when the parents of Christ are recorded in a connected succession, had to be carried down to Joseph rather, as was done, so that in that marriage no injury should be done to the male sex, which is certainly the superior; and nothing was lost to the truth, since both Joseph and Mary were of the seed of David, from which Christ had been foretold to come.

Every good of marriage, then, was fulfilled in those parents of Christ: offspring, faithfulness, sacrament. The offspring we recognize as the Lord Jesus himself; faithfulness, because there was no adultery; the sacrament, because there was no divorce. Only conjugal intercourse was not there, because in the flesh of sin it could not take place without that concupiscence of the flesh which came about from sin; and he willed to be conceived without it, who was to be without sin, not in the flesh of sin but in the likeness of the flesh of sin, so that by this too he might teach that all flesh born of intercourse is flesh of sin, since the only flesh not born of it was not flesh of sin. Conjugal intercourse that takes place with the intention of begetting is not itself sin, however, because the good will of the mind leads the bodily pleasure that follows it and does not follow it as it leads; nor is human choice dragged along by sin as its master, since the wound of sin is justly brought into the service of begetting. A certain itch of this wound reigns in the foul deeds of adulteries and of every kind of sexual immorality and impurity, but in the necessities of marriage it serves. There the shamefulness of such a master is condemned; here the honorableness of such an attendant is abashed. This lust, then, is not the good of marriage, but the obscenity of sinners, the necessity of those who beget, the heat of wantonness, the shame of marriage. Why, then, should those not remain spouses who by consent cease to lie together, if Joseph and Mary remained spouses, who never even began to lie together?

For this propagation of children, which among the holy fathers was a most dutiful service for begetting and preserving the people of God, in whom the prophecy of Christ had to go before, no longer has that necessity. For there now lies open, from all nations, an abundance of children to be begotten spiritually, from wherever they have been born carnally. And what is written, “A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,” is recognized as divided between that time and this: that was the time for embracing, this is the time for refraining from embracing.

So the apostle too, speaking of this, says: “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 free from anxiety.” All these things, to say something briefly in explanation, I think should be understood thus. “This I say, brothers: the time is short”: the people of God is no longer to be propagated carnally by generation but is now to be gathered spiritually by regeneration. “It remains,” then, that those who have wives should not be subjugated to carnal concupiscence; that those who weep in the sadness of present evil should rejoice in the hope of future good; that those who rejoice because of some temporal advantage should fear the eternal judgment; that those who buy should so possess by having as not to cling by loving; and that those who use this world should reckon that they are passing through, not remaining; “for the form of this world is passing away.” “I want you,” he says, “to be free from anxiety,” that is, I want you to have your heart lifted up to the things that do not pass away. Then he adds: “He who is without a wife thinks about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he who is joined in marriage thinks about the things of the world, how he may please his wife”; and so in a way he explains what he had said above: “Those who have wives, let them be as though they had none.” For those who have wives in such a way that they think about the things of the Lord, how they may please the Lord, and do not think, in the things of the world, about pleasing their wives, are as though they had none. This is done with ease when the wives too are such that their husbands please them not because they are rich, or high in rank, or noble by birth, or lovable in the flesh, but because they are believers, devout, chaste, good men.