On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.30–2.46

Again, as for another testimony from the divine book that he put forward, about Abimelech and every womb in his house being closed by God's will so that his women should not give birth, and opened again so that they should: what has it to do with the matter? What does it say about that shameful lust which is now in question? Did God take that lust away from those women and give it back when he willed? No; it was a punishment that they could not give birth, and a kindness that they could give birth in the manner of this corruptible flesh. For God would not confer on the body of this death such a kindness as only the body of that life in paradise before sin would have had, so that conception would come about without itching lust and childbirth without torturing pain. And since Scripture says that every womb was closed from outside, why should we not understand that it was done by some pain, so that the women could not endure intercourse—a pain inflicted when God roused it and removed when he had mercy? For if lust had been taken away to prevent the sowing of offspring, it would have had to be taken from the men, not the women. For a woman could lie with a man by her will even if the lust that goads her were absent, provided the man did not lack that by which he is aroused. Unless perhaps, because it is written that Abimelech himself was healed, he will say that male lust was given back to him. But if he had lost it, what need was there for him to be warned by God not to have intercourse with Abraham's wife? No: Scripture says he was healed because his house was healed of that plague.

Now let us look at those three things, any one of which, he says, would be the most profane thing that could be said if we said it: that God either did not make man, or made him for the devil, or at least that the devil fashioned the image of God, that is, man. Of these three, even he himself, unless he is senseless or too obstinate, admits that we do not say the first and the last. The question concerns the one he put second, in the middle, where he is so mistaken as to think that we say God made man for the devil—as though, in the human beings whom God creates from human parents, he intended this, cared for this, provided for this by the plan of his work, that the devil should have servants whom he cannot make for himself. Far be it that any piety, even a child's, should suspect this. God made human beings by his goodness, both the first without sin and the rest under sin, for the purposes of his deep counsels. For just as he knows what to do with the malice of the devil himself, and what he does is just and good, though the one with whom he deals is unjust and evil, and he did not refuse to create him because he foreknew that he would be evil, so it is with the whole human race, although no human being is born without the stain of sin: he who is supremely good works good, making some as vessels of mercy, whom grace distinguishes from those who are vessels of wrath, and others as vessels of wrath, to make known the riches of his glory toward the vessels of mercy. Let him go now and argue against the apostle, whose statement this is—or rather against the potter himself, to whom the apostle forbids any reply, saying, “O man, who are you to answer back to God? Does the thing formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why have you made me thus?’ Or does the potter not have power over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honor, another for dishonor?” Does he deny, then, that the vessels of wrath are under the devil? Or, because they are under the devil, does someone other than he who makes the vessels of mercy make them? Or does he make them from elsewhere and not from the same lump? So let him say here, “Then God makes vessels for the devil”—as though God did not know how to use them for his just and good works, just as he uses the devil himself.

Or does he feed for the devil the sons of perdition, the goats on the left side, and nourish and clothe them for the devil, because he makes his sun rise on the good and the evil and sends rain on the just and the unjust? He creates the evil, then, in the same way as he feeds and nourishes the evil; for what he bestows on them by creating belongs to the goodness of nature, and the growth he gives them by feeding and nourishing is not given to their malice; it is a good help that the Good One gives to the same good nature that he created. For insofar as they are human beings, it is the good of nature, of which God is the author; but insofar as they are born with sin, to perish unless they are reborn, they belong to the seed cursed from the beginning by the fault of that ancient disobedience. This fault, however, the maker even of the vessels of wrath uses well, to make known the riches of his glory toward the vessels of mercy, so that no one who belongs to the same lump, if he is set free by grace, may ascribe it to his own merits; but “he who glories, let him glory in the Lord.”

Departing with the Pelagians from this most true and most firmly founded apostolic and catholic faith, this man does not want those who are born to be under the devil, lest little children be brought to Christ to be rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into his kingdom. And so he accuses the church spread through the whole world, in which everywhere all the little infants who are to be baptized are breathed upon for no other reason than that the prince of the world may be cast out of them—the one by whom the vessels of wrath must be possessed, since they are born from Adam, unless they are reborn in Christ and, made vessels of mercy by grace, transferred into his kingdom. Coming out against this most firmly founded truth, and not wishing to seem to attack the whole church of Christ, he addresses me as if alone, and as if rebuking and admonishing me, says: “God made you too; but, as must be admitted, a grave error has infected you.” Indeed I acknowledge that God made me, and I give thanks; yet I would have perished with the vessels of wrath if he had only made me from Adam and had not remade me in Christ. Since he, possessed by Pelagian impiety, does not believe this, if he persists in so great an evil to the end, let not he but the catholics consider what kind of error, and how great, has not infected him but plainly killed him.

Consider what follows: “That children received from marriage are naturally good,” he says, “let us learn from the apostle, who says of the wicked: ‘Leaving the natural use of the woman, they burned in their desires toward one another, males working shamefulness with males.’ He shows, then,” he says, “that the use of the woman is both natural and praiseworthy in its measure, but that the crime is committed by one's own will against the modesty of the institution. Rightly, therefore,” he says, “in those who use it well the kind and measure of concupiscence are praised, and in the base its excess is punished. Indeed, at the same time that God gave vigor to the members of Abraham and Sarah, withered with age, he punished those same members in Sodom with a rain of fire. If, then, you think,” he says, “that the vigor of the members must be accused because through it the Sodomites were smeared with crimes, you will accuse also the creation of bread and wine, since the divine Scripture has indicated that they sinned from this source too. For the Lord says through the prophet Ezekiel: ‘Yet these were the iniquities of Sodom your sister: pride; in fullness of bread and abundance of wine she and her daughters overflowed; and they did not help the hand of the poor and needy.’ Choose now,” he says, “which you prefer: either ascribe the union of bodies to the divine work, or define the creation of bread and wine as likewise evil. If you do this, you will clearly be convicted of being a Manichee. He who keeps the measure of natural concupiscence uses a good well; he who does not keep the measure uses a good badly. What, then,” he says, “do you mean by saying 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 can be excused because of the natural good that is born of them’? By these words,” he says, “you have conceded what you had denied and taken away what you had conceded, and you labor at nothing more than not to be understood. Show a bodily marriage without union; or give this act one single name and call marriage either good or evil. You certainly undertook to define marriage as good: if marriage is good, if man, the fruit of marriage, is good, if this fruit, the work of God, cannot be evil, being born from good through good, where then is the original evil, which has been destroyed by so many prior admissions?”

To this I answer that not only children from marriage but also those from adultery are something good according to the work of God by which they were created; but that according to original sin they are born in condemnation from the first Adam, not only if they are begotten of adultery but also if of marriage, unless they are regenerated in the second Adam, who is Christ. And as for what the apostle says of the wicked, “Leaving the natural use of the woman, they burned in their desires toward one another, males working shamefulness with males,” he did not say the conjugal use, but the natural use, meaning that which takes place with the members created for this, so that through them both sexes can be united for begetting. And therefore, when anyone is united even with a harlot with those same members, the use is natural, yet not praiseworthy but blameworthy. But if anyone uses, even with his wife, that part of the body which was not established for begetting, it is against nature and shameful. Indeed, the same apostle first said of women, “For their women exchanged the natural use for that use which is against nature,” and then spoke of males working shamefulness with males, having left the natural use of the woman. By this name, then, “natural use,” the conjugal union was not praised; rather, crimes more unclean and more wicked were marked out than if they used even women unlawfully, but still naturally.

Bread and wine, however, we do not blame because of the luxurious and the drunken, any more than gold because of the covetous and the greedy. So too we do not blame the honorable union of spouses because of the shameful lust of bodies. For the former could have existed without any sin having been committed first, and married people would not have blushed at it; but the latter arose after sin, and they were forced to veil it in confusion. Hence it has remained for later married people, though they use this evil well and lawfully, to avoid human sight in this kind of act, and so to confess what is shameful, since no one ought to be ashamed of what is good. In this way these two things are made known: the good of the praiseworthy union, from which children are begotten, and the evil of the shameful lust, because of which those who are begotten must be regenerated so as not to be condemned. Therefore he who lies with someone lawfully with shameful lust uses an evil well; he who does so unlawfully uses an evil badly. For what both the evil and the good blush at more rightly receives the name of evil than of good; and we do better to believe him who says, “I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh,” than this man who calls it good; if he is confounded at it, he confesses it evil, but if he is not confounded, he adds shamelessness, a worse evil. We rightly said, then, 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 can be excused because of the natural good that is born of them,” since human nature, which is born whether of marriage or of adultery, is the work of God. If it were an evil, it should not be generated; if it had no evil, it would not need to be regenerated. And to sum up both in one word: if human nature were an evil, it could not be saved; if there were no evil in it, it would not need to be saved. He, then, who says it is not good denies the goodness of the Creator of the nature he created; but he who denies that there is evil in it grudges the merciful Savior to the nature that has been corrupted. Therefore, in human beings who are born, neither are adulteries to be excused by the good that the good Creator has created from them, nor is marriage to be accused by the evil that is to be healed there by the merciful Savior.

“Show,” he says, “a bodily marriage without union.” I do not show a bodily marriage without union; but neither does he show that same union without confusion. In paradise, however, if sin had not gone before, there would indeed have been no generation without the union of both sexes, but there would have been union without confusion; for in coming together there would have been a tranquil obedience of the members, not a shameful concupiscence of the flesh. Marriage, then, is good, from which a human being sown in due order is born; and the fruit of marriage is good, namely the human being himself who is so born; but sin is evil, with which every human being is born. For God made and makes man; but “through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed through to all men, in whom all sinned.”

“By a new kind of argument,” he says, “you both profess to be a catholic and act as patron to the Manichee, by calling marriage both a great good and a great evil.” He does not know at all what he is saying, or pretends not to know. For either he does not understand what we say, or does not want it understood. If he does not understand, he is hindered by the prejudice of error; if he does not want what we say to be understood, it is the fault of obstinacy, by which he defends his error. Jovinian too, who a few years ago tried to found a novel heresy, used to say that the catholics acted as patrons of the Manichees because against him they preferred holy virginity to marriage. But this man will answer that he does not think what Jovinian thought about there being no difference between marriage and virginity. Nor do I say that they think this; but let the new heretics recognize, from Jovinian's throwing the Manichees at the catholics, that this is nothing new. We, then, say that marriage is a good, not an evil. But just as the Arians charge us with being Sabellians, although we do not say, as the Sabellians do, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one and the same, but say, as the catholics do, that the nature of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one and the same, so the Pelagians throw the Manichees at us, although we do not say, as the Manichees do, that marriage is an evil, but say, as the catholics do, that an evil befell the first human beings, the first spouses, and from there passed through to all human beings. But just as the Arians, while fleeing the Sabellians, fell into something worse, because they dared to distinguish in the Trinity not persons but natures, so the Pelagians, while trying perversely to avoid the plague of the Manichees, are convicted of thinking more pernicious things about the fruit of marriage than the Manichees themselves, since they believe that little children do not need Christ the physician.

“You define,” he says, “that a human being, if born of sexual immorality, is not guilty, and if born of marriage, is not innocent. For this is where your statement leads, that a natural good can come into being from adulteries and an original evil is contracted even from marriage.” He tries entirely in vain, before an intelligent reader, to pervert what is right. Far be it from us to say that a human being born of sexual immorality is not guilty; rather, we say that a human being, whether born of marriage or of sexual immorality, is something good because of God the author of nature, and contracts something evil because of original sin. Our statement, then, that a natural good can come into being even from adulteries, while an original evil is contracted even from marriage, does not lead where he tries to bring it—that one is not born guilty from adulteries nor innocent from marriage—but to this: that from both one is made guilty by generation because of original sin, and from both one is to be absolved by regeneration because of the good of nature.

“One of these,” he says, “is true, the other false.” To him I reply with the same brevity: no, both are true, neither is false. “It is true,” he says, “that the human being born of adulteries cannot excuse their guilt, because what the adulterers did belongs to the fault of the will, but what they begot looks to the praise of fruitfulness; for if someone sows stolen wheat, the harvest that springs up is not liable. So I blame the thief,” he says, “but praise the crop. I pronounce innocent the one who is born from the nobility of the seeds, as the apostle says, ‘God gives it a body as he wills, and to each of the seeds its own body’; but I condemn the shameful man who sinned from the perversity of his purpose.”

To this he adds: “But clearly, if evil is contracted from marriage, marriage can be accused and cannot be excused, and you place its work and fruit under the devil's right, since every cause of evil is without good. But a human being who is born of marriage,” he says, “is to be ascribed not to crimes but to seeds. And the cause of the seeds lies in the creation of bodies; and he who uses these bodies badly wounds the merit of the good, not its kind. It is plainly clear, then,” he says, “that good is not the cause of evil. If, then,” he says, “original evil is contracted even from marriage, the coming together of marriage is the cause of evil, and that must be evil through which and from which an evil fruit has appeared, as the Lord says in the gospel: ‘A tree is known by its fruits.’ How,” he says, “do you think you should be listened to, when you say that marriage is good, yet define that nothing but evil comes forth from it? It is certain, then, that marriages are guilty if original sin is derived from them, and that they cannot be defended unless their fruit is shown to be innocent. But they are defended and declared good; their fruit, therefore, is shown to be innocent.”

Before I answer this, I want the reader to note that these men aim at nothing but that the Savior should not be necessary for little children, whom they deny to have any sins at all from which to be saved. This great perversity, so hostile to the grace of God given through Jesus Christ our Lord, who came to seek and to save what was lost, tries to insinuate itself into the hearts of those of little understanding by praise of the divine works, that is, by praise of human nature, praise of seed, praise of marriage, praise of the union of both sexes, praise of fruitfulness—all of which are good. I will not say “by praise of lust,” since even he is ashamed to name it, so that he may seem to praise something else and not it. And so, by not distinguishing the evils that have befallen nature from the goodness of nature itself, he does not show it to be healthy, which is false, but does not allow it, being sick, to be healed. And therefore he grants that what we said is true—that the good that is born of adulteries, that is, the human being, cannot excuse their guilt—and this, about which there is no question between us, he supports and confirms as best he can by the likeness of the thief sowing stolen wheat, from which a good harvest certainly springs. But the other thing we said, that the good of marriage cannot be accused because of the original evil that is contracted from it, he will not agree to be true, because if he agreed he would be not a Pelagian heretic but a catholic. “But clearly,” he says, “if evil is contracted from marriage, it can be accused and cannot be excused, and you place its work and fruit under the devil's right, since every cause of evil is without good.” And he weaves the rest onto this to prove that the cause of evil cannot be good, and so that marriage, because it is good, is not the cause of evil, and therefore that a sinner who needs a Savior cannot possibly be born of it—as though we said that marriage is the cause of sin. Although the human being born of it is not born without sin, marriage was instituted for the sake of begetting, not of sinning. That is why the Lord's blessing of marriage is: “Increase and multiply and fill the earth.” But the sin that is contracted from it by those who are born does not belong to marriage, but to the evil that has befallen the human beings by whose union marriage exists. For the evil of shameful lust can exist without marriage, and marriage could have existed without it; but it belongs to the condition of a body not of that life but of this death that marriage cannot now exist without it, though it can exist without marriage. For the shameful concupiscence of the flesh certainly exists without marriage when it commits adulteries and every kind of sexual immorality and uncleanness, far contrary to the chastity of marriage; or when it commits none of these, because the man permits it by no consent, and yet it rises and moves and moves him, and often in sleep reaches the likeness of the act itself and the end of its motion. This evil, then, even in marriage is not the evil of marriage; but marriage has it ready in the body of this death, even against its will, and cannot without it fulfill what it wills. It does not come to marriage, then, from its institution, which was blessed, but from this: that “through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed through to all men, in whom all sinned.”

What, then, does he mean by saying, “A tree is known by its fruits,” since we read that the Lord said this in the gospel? Was the Lord speaking of this, and not rather of the two wills of human beings, the good and the evil, calling the one a good tree and the other an evil tree, because good works spring from a good will and evil ones from an evil will, and good cannot spring from evil nor evil from good? But if we set down marriage as a good tree, according to the gospel likeness he mentioned, we shall surely have to set down sexual immorality, on the contrary, as an evil tree. So if a human being is called the fruit of marriage, as a good fruit from a good tree, surely a human being ought not to have been born of sexual immorality; for an evil tree does not produce good fruit. But if he says that in that case adultery should not be put in the place of the tree, but rather human nature, from which a human being is born, then here too the tree will not be marriage but human nature, from which a human being is born. That gospel likeness therefore has no bearing on this question, because marriage is not the cause of the sin that is contracted by one being born and expiated in one being reborn; the voluntary sin of the first man is the cause of original sin. “You say again,” he says, “‘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.’” I both said it and said it most truly; and if he were not a Pelagian but a catholic, he himself would say nothing else in the catholic church.

What, then, is this that he asks us: through what is sin found in a little child? Through the will, or through marriage, or through the parents? For so he speaks, and he answers, as it were, each of these, and by clearing all of them of sin he wants nothing to remain through which sin may be found in a little child. Note, finally, his very words: “Through what, then,” he says, “is sin found in a little child? Through the will? There was none in him. Through marriage? But this belongs to the act of the parents, who, as you had stated beforehand, did not sin in this act; though, as appears from what follows, you had not truly conceded this. Is marriage, then, to be execrated,” he says, “as having caused evil? But marriage only indicates the act of the persons. The parents, then, who caused sin by their coming together, are rightly damnable. There can be no doubt now,” he says, “if we follow your opinion, that spouses are handed over to eternal punishment, since by their labor it came about that the devil gained dominion over human beings. And where is what you said a little before, that man is the work of God? For if there is evil in human beings through their origin, and through the evil the devil has right over human beings, you are saying that the devil is the author of human beings, since the origin of those who are born comes from him. But if you believe that man is made by God and that spouses are innocent, see how impossible it is that original sin should be contracted from them.”

To all these things the apostle answers him. He blames neither the will of the little child, which in him is not yet his own for sinning, nor marriage, insofar as it is marriage, which has from God not only its institution but also its blessing, nor the parents, insofar as they are parents, joined to each other lawfully and legitimately for procreating children; but he says: “Through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and so it passed through to all men, in whom all sinned.” If these men received this with catholic ears and minds, they would not have spirits rebellious against the faith and grace of Christ, nor would they try in vain to turn these apostolic words, so clear and so manifest, to their own heretical sense, asserting that this was said because Adam sinned first, in whom anyone thereafter who wished to sin found an example of sinning, so that sin passed from that one man into all human beings not by generation but by imitation of him. Surely, if the apostle had wanted imitation to be understood here, he would have said that sin entered into this world and passed through to all men not through one man but rather through the devil. For of the devil it is written: “And those who are of his side imitate him.” But he said “through one man” because it was from him that the generation of human beings began, so as to teach that original sin went through to all by generation.

What else do the apostle's following words indicate? For after saying this, he added: “For until the law sin was in the world”—that is, because not even the law could take away sin. “But sin,” he says, “was not imputed when there was no law.” It existed, then, but was not imputed, because what was to be imputed was not shown; as he says elsewhere, “Through the law comes the knowledge of sin.” “But death reigned,” he says, “from Adam until Moses”—this is what he had said above, “until the law”—not that there was no sin from Moses onward, but because not even the law given through Moses could take away the reign of death, which certainly reigns only through sin. And its reign is this, that it casts mortal man headlong even into the second death, which is eternal. In whom did it reign? “Even in those,” he says, “who did not sin in the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one to come.” Of whom to come, if not Christ? And what kind of type, if not by contrast? This he says briefly elsewhere too: “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive”: as that in the one, so this in the other. That is the type; but this type is not alike in every respect. Hence the apostle here went on to add: “But the gift is not like the offense; for if through the offense of one many died, much more has the grace of God and the gift in the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many.” What does “much more has abounded” mean, except that all who are set free through Christ die temporally because of Adam, but will live without end because of Christ himself? “And the gift,” he says, “is not as it was through the one man who sinned. For the judgment was from one to condemnation, but the grace from many offenses to justification.” From one what, if not one offense? For there follows: “but the grace from many offenses.” Let these men say how the judgment was from one offense to condemnation, unless because even the one original sin, which passed through to all men, is enough for condemnation. But grace is from many offenses to justification, because it releases not only that one which is contracted by origin, but also the others that are added in each human being by the motion of his own will. “For if through the offense of one death reigned through the one, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of righteousness reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. So then, as through the offense of one it came to all men to condemnation, so also through the righteousness of one it comes to all men to justification of life.” Let them still remain in the vanity of their mind and say that the one man did not pass on a descent of sin but offered an example of it. How, then, did it come to all men to condemnation through the offense of one, and not rather through the many offenses of each, unless because even if there is only that one, it is enough to bring to condemnation even with no others added, as it brings the little children who die, who are born from Adam, unless they are reborn in Christ? Why, then, does he ask of us what he does not want to hear from the apostle: through what sin is found in a little child, through the will, or through marriage, or through the parents? See, let him hear through what; let him hear and be silent: through what sin is found in a little child: “Through the offense of one,” says the apostle, “it came to all men to condemnation.” He said “all” to condemnation through Adam, and “all” to justification through Christ, though Christ certainly does not bring to life all who die in Adam. But he said “all” and “all” because, just as no one comes to death except through Adam, so no one comes to life except through Christ; as we say of a teacher of letters, if he is the only one in a city, “He teaches everyone here their letters,” not because everyone learns, but because no one learns except from him. Finally, those whom he had called “all” he afterward called “many,” meaning the same people by both “all” and “many”: “For as through the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one many will be made righteous.”