On Marriage and Concupiscence 1.16–1.34

But in married people, just as these things are to be desired and praised, so others are to be tolerated, lest they fall into damnable crimes, that is, into acts of sexual immorality or adulteries. For the sake of avoiding this evil, even those acts of intercourse between spouses that are not done for the sake of begetting but serve a victorious concupiscence—in which they are commanded not to defraud each other, lest Satan tempt them because of their incontinence—are not indeed prescribed by way of command, yet they are granted by way of pardon. For thus it is written: “Let the husband render the debt to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The woman does not have power over her own body, but the husband; likewise the husband does not have power over his own body, but the woman. Do not defraud each other, except by consent for a time, so that you may be free for prayer; and come together again, lest Satan tempt you because of your incontinence. But this I say by way of pardon, not by way of command.” Where pardon is to be given, then, it will by no means be denied that there is some fault. Since, therefore, intercourse with the intention of begetting, which is what is properly to be ascribed to marriage, is not blameworthy, what does the apostle grant by way of pardon, except that spouses, when they do not contain themselves, demand the debt of the flesh from each other not from the will to offspring but from the pleasure of lust? Yet this pleasure does not fall into fault because of marriage; rather, because of marriage it receives pardon. For this reason too marriage is praiseworthy, since for its own sake it causes even what does not belong to it to be forgiven. For even this intercourse, in which concupiscence is served, is not so conducted as to prevent the offspring that marriage requires.

But it is one thing not to lie together except with the sole will to beget, which has no fault; another to seek the pleasure of the flesh in lying together, but not beyond one's spouse, which has a venial fault, because, even if the intercourse is not for the sake of propagating offspring, the propagation of offspring is still not obstructed for the sake of this lust by an evil prayer or an evil deed. For those who do this, though they are called spouses, are not, nor do they keep any of the reality of marriage; they hold out an honorable name to veil their shamefulness. They betray themselves, however, when they go so far as to expose the children who are born against their will. For they hate to nourish or keep those whom they feared to beget. So when a dark iniquity rages against its own, whom it begot unwillingly, it is brought out into the light by an open iniquity, and hidden shamefulness is convicted by manifest cruelty. Sometimes this lustful cruelty, or cruel lust, goes so far as even to procure poisons of sterility and, if these avail nothing, to extinguish and destroy in some way within the womb the offspring conceived, wishing its offspring to perish before it lives, or, if it was already living in the womb, to be killed before it is born. Assuredly, if both are such, they are not spouses; and if they were such from the beginning, they came together not by marriage but rather by sexual immorality. But if they are not both such, I dare to say: either she is in a way her husband's harlot, or he is his wife's adulterer.

Since, then, marriage cannot be such as that of the first human beings could have been had sin not gone before, let it be such as that of the holy fathers was: so that the shameful concupiscence of the flesh—which in paradise neither existed before sin nor was permitted to remain there after sin, and which must of necessity exist in the body of this death—is not served, but is rather itself compelled to serve, and only for propagating offspring. Or else, since this time, which we have said is now the time for refraining from embracing, has no necessity of this duty, with so great a fertility of children to be begotten spiritually lying ready everywhere among all nations, let him who can receive that good of excellent continence receive it; but he who cannot receive it, even if he takes a wife, does not sin, and if a woman does not contain herself, let her marry. For it is good for a man not to touch a woman. But since not all receive this word, but those to whom it is given, it remains that because of acts of sexual immorality each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband, and so the weakness of incontinence, lest it fall into the ruin of crimes, is caught by the honorableness of marriage. For what the apostle says about women, “I want the younger women to marry,” can be said about men too—I want the younger men to take wives—so that it may belong to both sexes to procreate children, to be fathers and mothers of families, and to give the adversary no occasion for reproach.

In marriage, however, let the goods of marriage be loved: offspring, faithfulness, sacrament. But offspring not only that it may be born but also that it may be reborn; for it is born to punishment unless it is reborn to life. And faithfulness, not such as even unbelievers have toward each other in their jealousy for the flesh; for what husband, however ungodly, wants an adulterous wife? Or what woman, however ungodly, wants an adulterous husband? This is indeed a natural good in marriage, but a carnal one. But a member of Christ ought to fear adultery in the spouse for the spouse's sake, not for his own, and to hope from Christ for the reward of the faithfulness he shows the spouse. And the sacrament, which not even those who are separated and adulterous lose, let spouses guard in harmony and chastity. For it alone holds even a barren marriage together by the law of piety, when the hope of fruitfulness, for the sake of which it was joined, has been lost. Let him who wants to praise marriage praise these goods of marriage in marriage. But the concupiscence of the flesh is not to be ascribed to marriage, but to be tolerated in it. For it is not a good coming from natural marriage, but an evil befalling it from the ancient sin.

Because of this concupiscence, then, it comes about that even from the just and lawful marriages of the children of God, not children of God but children of the world are begotten, because those who beget, even if they have already been regenerated, do not beget from what makes them children of God, but from what makes them still children of the world. For it is the Lord's statement: “The children of this world beget and are begotten.” From what makes us still children of this world, then, our outer man is corrupted, and from this also children of this world are begotten, and they do not become children of God unless they are regenerated; but from what makes us children of God, the inner man is renewed from day to day—although the outer man itself has been sanctified through the bath of regeneration and has received the hope of future incorruption, for which reason it is also rightly called a temple of God. “Your bodies,” says the apostle, “are a temple in you of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God, and you are not your own; for you were bought at a great price. Glorify God, then, in your body.” All this was said not only because of present sanctification but especially because of that hope of which he says in another place: “But we ourselves too, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, awaiting adoption, the redemption of our body.” If, then, according to the apostle, the redemption of our body is awaited, surely what is awaited is still hoped for and not yet held. So he adds: “For in hope we have been saved; but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does anyone hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” It is not, therefore, through what we await, but through what we endure, that carnal children are propagated. Far be it, then, that a believing man, when he hears the apostle say, “Love your wives,” should love in his wife the concupiscence of the flesh, which he ought not to love even in himself, since he hears the other apostle: “Do not love the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him; for all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes and the ambition of the world, which is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world will pass away, and its concupiscence; but he who does the will of God abides for ever, as God also abides for ever.”

Whatever is born of this concupiscence of the flesh, then, is born to the world, not to God; but it is born to God when it is reborn of water and the Spirit. Regeneration alone forgives the guilt of this concupiscence, which generation contracts. What has been generated, then, must be regenerated, because there is no other way for what has been contracted to be forgiven. That what has been forgiven in the parent should be contracted in the offspring happens in wonderful ways indeed, but it does happen. So that these things, invisible and incredible to unbelievers yet true, might have some visible example, divine providence has provided one in certain trees. For why should we not believe that this was established for this purpose, that the wild olive is born from the olive? Or is it not to be believed that, in some thing created for human use, the Creator foresaw and established what might serve as an example for the human race? It is wonderful, then, how those freed by grace from the chain of sin nevertheless beget children bound by the same chain, who must be freed in the same way. We admit it is wonderful. But that the offspring of wild olives lie hidden even in the seeds of olives—when would this be believed, unless it were proved by experience? Therefore, just as from the seed of the wild olive a wild olive is begotten, and from the seed of the olive nothing but a wild olive, though there is a very great difference between the wild olive and the olive, so from the flesh of a sinner and from the flesh of a righteous man alike a sinner is begotten, though there is a very great difference between the sinner and the righteous man. And a sinner is begotten who is as yet nothing in act and new in birth, but old in guilt: a human being from the Creator, a captive from the deceiver, in need of a Redeemer. But it is asked how the captivity of offspring can be contracted even from parents already redeemed. And because this is not traced out by easy reasoning nor explained in words, unbelievers do not believe it—as though what we said about the wild olive and the olive, that the offspring should be like a kind unlike its parent, were easily found out by some reasoning or explained in words. But this can be seen by anyone who is willing to try it. Let it serve, then, as an example, from which what cannot be seen may also be believed.

For the Christian faith, which the new heretics have begun to attack, does not doubt that those who are washed in the bath of regeneration are redeemed from the power of the devil, and that those not yet redeemed by such regeneration, even the little children of the redeemed, are captives under the power of that same devil unless they too are redeemed by the same grace of Christ. For we do not doubt that the benefit of God of which the apostle speaks belongs to all ages: “who rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love.” Whoever denies, then, that little children, when they are baptized, are rescued from this power of darkness, whose prince is the devil—that is, from the power of the devil and his angels—is refuted by the truth of the church's own sacraments, which no heretical novelty is allowed to take away or change in the church of Christ, since the head rules and helps his whole body, the little ones with the great. It is in truth, then, and not in falsehood, that the devil's power is exorcised in little children, and they renounce him—since they cannot do so through their own hearts and mouths, they do it through those of the people who carry them—so that, rescued from the power of darkness, they may be transferred into the kingdom of their Lord. What, then, is in them through which they are held in the power of the devil until they are rescued from it by the sacrament of Christ's baptism? What is it but sin? For the devil found nothing else by which he could bring under his own right human nature, which the good Author created good. But little children have committed no sin of their own in their own life. There remains, then, original sin, through which they are captives under the power of the devil, unless they are redeemed from it by the bath of regeneration and the blood of Christ and pass into the kingdom of their Redeemer, the power of their captor being frustrated and power being given them to become children of God instead of children of this world.

Now if we were in some way to question those goods of marriage as to how sin could have been propagated from them to little children, the work of propagating offspring will answer us: “I would have been happier in paradise if sin had not been committed. For to me belongs that blessing of God, ‘Increase and multiply.’ For this good work the different members of the different sexes were formed; they existed already before sin, but they were not shameful.” The faithfulness of chastity will answer: “If there had been no sin, what could have been more secure than I in paradise, where neither my own lust would goad me nor another's tempt me?” The sacrament of marriage too will answer: “Of me it was said in paradise before sin, ‘A man will leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two will be in one flesh,’ which the apostle calls a great sacrament in Christ and in the church.” What, then, is great in Christ and in the church is very small in each husband and wife, yet it is still a sacrament of inseparable union. Which of these is there in marriage from which the chain of sin could pass to descendants? None at all; and surely the goodness of marriage would be complete in these three goods, by which marriage is good even now.

But further, if that concupiscence of the flesh is questioned, through which those members became shameful that had not been shameful before, will it not answer that it began to exist in man's members after sin? And that it is therefore called in the apostle's words the law of sin, because it made man subject to itself when he refused to be subject to his God; and that it is the thing at which the first married couple blushed then, when they covered their shameful parts, and at which all now blush when they seek privacy for lying together and do not dare to have as witnesses of this act even the children whom they begot by it? Against this natural modesty the error of the Cynic philosophers struggled with astonishing shamelessness, since they held that because this act was lawful and honorable, it should be done openly with one's spouse. Hence the filthiness of this shamelessness rightly received the name of dogs; for that is why they were called Cynics.

This concupiscence, in short, this law of sin dwelling in the members, which the law of righteousness forbids us to obey, as the apostle says, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires, and do not present your members to sin as weapons of iniquity”—this concupiscence, I say, which is expiated only by the sacrament of regeneration, surely passes on the chain of sin by generation to descendants, unless they too are released from it by regeneration. For in the regenerate this concupiscence itself is no longer sin, when consent is not given to it for unlawful deeds, and the members are not handed over by the mind, their queen, to carry them out; so that if what is written, “You shall not covet,” is not done, at least what we read elsewhere is done: “Do not go after your lusts.” But because, by a certain way of speaking, it is called sin, since it came about by sin and, if it conquers, produces sin, its guilt prevails in the one who is generated; and this guilt the grace of Christ, through the forgiveness of all sins, does not allow to prevail in the one who is regenerated, if he does not obey it when it, so to speak, commands evil deeds. It is called sin in the sense that it was made by sin, though in the regenerate it is no longer itself sin, just as speech, which the tongue produces, is called a tongue, and writing, which the hand produces, is called a hand; and it is called sin also in the sense that, if it conquers, it produces sin, just as cold is called sluggish, not because it is produced by sluggish people, but because it makes people sluggish.

This wound, inflicted on the human race by the devil, compels whatever is born through it to be under the devil, as though he were plucking fruit by right from his own shrub; not that human nature is from him, for it is only from God, but the fault is, which is not from God. For human nature is condemned not on its own account—it is praiseworthy, being the work of God—but on account of the damnable fault by which it has been corrupted. And on account of what it is condemned for, on that account it is also subjected to the damnable devil, because the devil himself too is an unclean spirit: good, certainly, in that he is a spirit, evil in that he is unclean; for he is a spirit by nature and unclean by fault, and of these two the former is from God, the latter from himself. So he does not hold human beings, whether of greater age or infants, because they are human beings, but because they are unclean. Let him, then, who wonders that a creature of God is subject to the devil not wonder; for a creature of God is subject to a creature of God, the lesser to the greater, since a man is subject to an angel—not, however, on account of nature, but on account of fault, since it is the unclean subject to the unclean. This is his fruit from the ancient root of uncleanness that he planted in man; though he himself, the more unclean he is, will suffer the greater punishments at the last judgment. Nevertheless, even those for whom it will be more tolerable in that condemnation are subject to him as to the prince and author of sin, because there will be no cause of condemnation except sin.

Therefore the devil holds little children guilty, born not from the good by which marriage is good, but from the evil of concupiscence, which marriage indeed uses well but at which marriage too blushes. For although marriage is honorable in all the goods that properly belong to it, even if it keeps its bed undefiled not only from acts of sexual immorality and adulteries, which are damnable crimes, but also from those excesses of intercourse that take place not for the sake of offspring under the rule of the will but for the sake of pleasure under the victory of lust, which in spouses are venial sins—still, when it comes to the work of begetting, that lawful and honorable intercourse itself cannot be without the heat of lust, so that what belongs to reason, not to lust, can be accomplished. This heat, whether it follows the will or goes before it, still does not move the members, which cannot be moved by the will, except by a kind of command of its own; and so it shows itself to be not the servant of a will that commands but the punishment of a will that disobeyed, and to be set in motion not by free choice but by some enticing goad, and therefore to be shameful. From this concupiscence of the flesh—which, although in the regenerate it is no longer reckoned as sin, nevertheless does not befall nature except from sin—from this concupiscence of the flesh, I say, as the daughter of sin, and, when consent is given to it for shameful acts, the mother also of many sins, whatever offspring is born is bound by original sin, unless it is reborn in him whom the virgin conceived without this concupiscence, and who therefore, when he deigned to be born in the flesh, alone was born without sin.

But if it is asked how this concupiscence of the flesh remains in the regenerate, in whom the forgiveness of all sins has taken place—since it is through it that the carnal offspring even of a baptized parent is sown and with it that it is begotten—or at any rate, if in a baptized parent it can exist and not be sin, why the same thing should be sin in the offspring, the answer is that concupiscence of the flesh is forgiven in baptism, not so that it ceases to exist, but so that it is not imputed as sin. And though its guilt is already loosed, it still remains until all our weakness is healed, as the renewal of the inner man advances from day to day, when the outer man has put on incorruption. For it does not remain substantially, like some body or spirit, but is a certain affection of an evil quality, like a languor. Nothing remains, then, that is not forgiven when it takes place, as it is written, “The Lord is merciful to all our iniquities”; but until what follows also takes place, “who heals all your languors, who redeems your life from corruption,” the concupiscence of the flesh remains in the body of this death, and we are commanded not to obey its vicious desires to commit unlawful acts, so that sin may not reign in our mortal body. Yet this concupiscence is diminished daily in those who make progress and are continent, and most of all when old age comes on as well. But in those who serve it wickedly it gains such strength that often, even when their members fail with age and those same parts of the body are less able to be moved to that work, it does not cease to rage more shamefully and more wantonly.

In those, then, who are regenerated in Christ, when they receive the forgiveness of absolutely all sins, it is certainly necessary that the guilt of this concupiscence also, though it still remains, be forgiven, so that, as I said, it is not imputed as sin. For just as the guilt of those sins that cannot remain, because they pass away as they are done, nevertheless remains, and will remain for ever unless it is forgiven, so the guilt of this concupiscence is taken away when it is forgiven. For this is what it is not to have sin: not to be guilty of sin. For if someone, for example, has committed adultery, even if he never does it again, he is guilty of adultery until the guilt of it is forgiven by pardon. He has sin, then, although what he committed no longer exists, since it passed away with the time in which it was done. For if to stop sinning were the same as not to have sins, it would be enough for Scripture to warn us, “Son, you have sinned; do not do so again.” But it is not enough; it added, “and pray about your former sins, that they may be forgiven you.” They remain, then, unless they are forgiven. But how do they remain, if they are past, unless because they have passed away in act but remain in guilt? So conversely it can happen that something remains in act but passes away in guilt.

For the concupiscence of the flesh does something even when neither the heart's assent is given to it, so that it reigns, nor the members, as weapons with which to carry out what it commands. And what does it do, but produce those evil and shameful desires themselves? For if they were good and lawful, the apostle would not forbid obeying them, saying, “Let not sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires.” He does not say “so that you have its desires,” but “so that you obey its desires,” so that, since they are greater in some and lesser in others, according as each has made progress in the newness of the inner man, we may keep up the contest of righteousness and chastity in this: not to obey them. Yet we ought to will that these desires should not even exist, even if we cannot attain this in the body of this death. For this is why the same apostle, speaking in another place as though in his own person, instructs us, saying, “For I do not do what I do not will, but what I hate, that I do,” that is, I lust; for he did not will to do even this, so as to be perfect in every part. “But if I do what I do not will,” he says, “I agree with the law that it is good”—because the law too does not will what I also do not will. For the law that says, “You shall not covet,” does not will that I should covet, and I do not will to covet. In this, then, the will of the law and my will agree. But because he did not will to lust and yet did lust, though he did not serve that concupiscence by any consent, he added: “But now it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me.”

But a man is greatly deceived who, consenting to the concupiscence of his flesh and deciding and resolving to do what it desires, thinks he may still say, “It is not I who do it,” even if he hates it, because he consents. For both are true at once: he himself hates it, because he knows it is evil, and he himself does it, because he has resolved to do it. And if he adds what Scripture forbids when it says, “And do not present your members to sin as weapons of iniquity,” so that he carries out with the body too what he resolved to do in the heart, and then says, “It is not I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me,” because he is displeased with himself when he decides and does it, he errs so badly that he does not even recognize himself, since, when it is wholly himself, both in the heart that resolves and in the body that carries it out, he still does not think it is himself. He, then, who says, “It is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me,” speaks the truth if he only lusts; not if he decides by the heart's consent, or even carries it out by the service of the body.

Then the apostle adds: “For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh; for to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good I do not find.” This was said because good is accomplished when there are no evil desires, just as evil is accomplished when evil desires are obeyed. But when they exist but are not obeyed, neither is evil accomplished, since they are not obeyed, nor good, since they exist; but good is done in part, because consent is not given to evil concupiscence, and evil remains in part, because there is at least the lusting. That is why the apostle does not say that to do good is not present with him, but to accomplish it. For he does much good who does what is written, “Do not go after your lusts,” but he does not accomplish it, because he does not fulfill what is written, “You shall not covet.” The law said, “You shall not covet,” for this reason: so that, finding ourselves lying in this disease, we might seek the medicine of grace, and might know in that commandment both toward what we ought to strive by progress in this mortality and what can be reached by us in that most blessed immortality. For unless it were at some time to be accomplished, it would never have been commanded.

Then the apostle, repeating himself to commend the preceding statement more fully, says: “For I do not do the good that I will, but the evil that I do not will, that I do. But if I do what I do not will, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me.” And he goes on: “I find, then, a law, that when I will to do good, evil is present with me”—that is: I find that the law is good for me when I will to do what the law wills, since evil is present, not to the law itself, which says, “You shall not covet,” but to me: the evil that I do not will, since I lust even against my will. “For I delight in the law of God,” he says, “according to the inner man; but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and taking me captive under the law of sin that is in my members.” This delight in the law of God according to the inner man comes to us from the great grace of God. For in it our inner man is renewed from day to day, when it perseveringly makes progress in it. For it is not fear that tortures but love that delights. There we are truly free, where we do not take delight unwillingly.

But what he says, “but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind,” is the very concupiscence of which we are speaking, the law of sin in the flesh of sin. And when he said, “and taking me captive under the law of sin,” that is, under itself, “which is in my members,” either he said “taking captive” for “trying to take captive,” that is, pressing to consent and carry out; or rather—and this admits of no dispute—“taking captive” according to the flesh, for unless carnal concupiscence, which he calls the law of sin, held the flesh, it would surely not stir up in it any unlawful desire that the mind ought not to obey. But because he did not say “taking my flesh captive” but “taking me captive,” we had to look for another sense here and to take “taking captive” as if he had said “trying to take captive.” But why should he not say “taking me captive” when he wanted his flesh to be understood? Was it not said of Jesus, when his flesh had not been found in the tomb, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have put him”? Was that wrongly said because it did not say “the flesh” or “the body of my Lord,” but “my Lord”?