St. Augustine's "On the Good of Marriage"

Introduction

St. Augustine was a convert from the heresy of Manichaeism, and after his baptism into the Catholic faith, he became one of the greatest opponents of the Manichaean heresy.  Following the Aristotelean tradition of the “golden mean,”[1] Augustine sought to “[o]n one side lay Manicheanism, which denied that God established marriage and treated even conjugal sex as evil.  On the other side lay Jovinian’s teachings, declaring that married people who are faithful to their spouses are equal in merit to celibate Christians belonging to religious orders.”[2]  Augustine realized that marriage and conjugal union are not intrinsically evil, but in fact “good” in God’s eyes (Gen 1:10 DR), and in writing On the Good of Marriage, St. Augustine aimed to overturn the errors of Manichaean morality and to prove that marriage, though not the highest vocation, is neither sinful nor to be discouraged if a man believes it to be his divine calling. 

Celibacy, the Better Part

St. Augustine reminds his readers that a religious life of celibacy is the higher calling, “the best part” (Lk 10:42) chosen by Mary Magdalen in the Gospels.  As Augustine points out, St. Paul warns the unmarried, “Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife… he that giveth her not [in marriage], doth better” (1 Cor 7:27, 38), and Christ, speaking of celibacy, said, “He that can take, let him take it” (Mt 19:12).  Yet, Augustine says, we are not to understand that marriage is condemned, but rather that celibacy offers an objectively more perfect service of oneself to God,[3] and that someone who can safely preserve chastity by remaining unmarried should do so.[4]  Celibacy is, after all, the life chosen by both Christ and His Blessed Mother as the most selfless and perfect gift to God. 

The Good of Marriage

On the other hand, Augustine writes that “the chastity of continence is better than marriage chastity, while yet both are good: but when we compare the persons, he is better, who has a greater good than another.”[5]  St. Augustine’s point is that, though religious life is the objectively higher calling, not all are capable of remaining celibate for life, and “we are not…to think marriage an evil….”[6]  In fact, Christ commended the vocation to marriage, “the first natural bond of human society,”[7] by both decidedly condemning divorce and by Himself attending the wedding at Cana and performing His first miracle for the new couple.[8]  Ultimately one’s choice of a vocation must be based upon how he can best save his soul and the souls of others,[9] and many married men and women became examples of great holiness, including Susanna, Abraham, and Martha.[10]  Moreover, Augustine reminds us that St. Paul calls marriage a “great sacrament” (Eph 5:32), that young women “should marry, bear children, be mistresses of families” (1 Tim 5:14), and that she “sinneth not, if she marry” (1 Cor 7:36).  “Therefore marriage is a good,” Augustine says, “wherein married persons are so much the better, in proportion as they fear God with greater chastity and faithfulness, specially if the sons, whom they desire after the flesh, they also bring up after the spirit.”[11]

According to St. Augustine, what is it specifically that makes marriage a “good” and an admirable vocation?  There are three primary goods of marriage: “Therefore the good of marriage throughout all nations and all men stands in the occasion of begetting, and faith of chastity: but, so far as pertains unto the People of God, also in the sanctity of the Sacrament….”[12]  In other words, Augustine places the order of goods thus: first, the children; second, the bond of charity between spouses; third, marriage as a sign of Christ’s self-sacrificial love for His Bride, the Church. 

Serious Responsibilities

Unfortunately, these goods can be undermined by violations against chastity, and well aware of this, St. Augustine enumerates some important implications that the powers of sexuality impose on men and women.  As Jay Wood writes, “Erotic desires and passions were not part of God’s original plan for our sexual lives, as the Pelagian heretic Julian of Eclanum taught, but a consequence of sin.  According to Augustine, sin caused a disjunction between our bodies and wills, mirroring the split between God’s will and our wills--our bodies no longer obey reason and the will but are moved by lust.”[13] 

Thus, two of the most grievous sins against fidelity are adultery and fornication, offences which are gravely sinful because they use the other person as a mere object of lustful desire, rather than respecting the “gift of self”[14] to each other that is implied in married conjugality.  Augustine warns that even married persons must guard against what John Paul II would later call “adultery of the heart,”[15] by which one spouse uses the other to satisfy the desire for pleasure instead of for the properly-ordered goods.  Rather, they must remember that their marriage is ordered toward the selfless purposes of procreation and unification with one another in what John Paul II would term “spousal” self-gift.[16]

Spouses should therefore cultivate temperance since, as Augustine says, “no one can wisely use [the powers of sexuality], save who can also continently not use them.”[17]  Like Abraham, married persons should be able to govern their actions according to reason and exercise virtuous self-control over their emotions and sensual drives.[18]  If they are conscientious about doing this, they will join the saintly mothers and fathers whose vocations have helped them attain eternal life: they will “sit down in the kingdom of God with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, who not for the sake of this world, but for the sake of Christ, were husbands, for the sake of Christ were fathers.”[19]

Conclusion

In writing On the Good of Marriage, St. Augustine of Hippo was primarily directing his attack against Manichaeism, the most prominent heresy of his day.  Modernity, however, is in no less need of these teachings about marriage.  In fact, the Christian family is under arguably the severest attack it has ever seen, rebelling against all three of the sacred purposes for which marriage was instituted.  St. Augustine’s words about the sacrament of matrimony are just as true in the modern Church as they were in his own day and are of critical importance both for couples and the unmarried alike.  I would highly recommend On the Good of Marriage, authored by one of the greatest Fathers in the history of Christendom, as both an antidote to modern confusion about marriage and as a tool to be used by Christian couples in the fulfillment of their sacred vocation. 

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[1] Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, II, 2, trans. W. D. Ross, at The Internet Classics Archive (accessed 8 December

2017), at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.8.viii.html.

[2] Bonnie Kent, “Augustine’s On the Good of Marriage and Infused Virtue in the Twelfth Century,” Journal of Religious Ethics 41, no. 1 (2013), 119. 

[3] Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, 13-14, trans. C.L. Cornish, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: First Series, ed. Philip Schaff, vol. 3 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887), at New Advent, www.newadvent.org.

[4] Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, 17. 

[5] Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, 28.

[6] Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, 8.

[7] Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, 1.

[8] Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, 3.

[9] Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, 15.

[10] Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, 8. 

[11] Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, 22.

[12] Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, 32.

[13] Jay Wood, “What Would Augustine Say?,” Christian History 19, no. 3 (2000), 36-38. 

[14] Pope John Paul II, General Audience (21 April 1982), in Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006), 79:8, 435. 

[15] Pope John Paul II, General Audience (1 October 1980), in Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006), 42:1, p. 293.   

[16] John Paul II, General Audience (16 January 1980), trans. Waldstein, 15:1, p. 185. 

[17] Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, 25.

[18] Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, 27.

[19] Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, 35.