On the Good of Marriage

Contents

Translation in progress.

Reading pages: 1–14 · 15–31 · 32–35

1. 1Augustine grounds marriage in God's creation of all humans from one pair, making husband and wife the first natural bond of human society.
2. 2Augustine sets aside the question of how the first humans would have had children without sin, listing several possible views.
3. 3Marriage is good not only for children but for the natural companionship of the sexes, and it gives faithfulness and restraint to desire.
4. 4Marital faithfulness is a great good; its violation is adultery, and breaking an adulterous pact to return to one's spouse is not faithlessness.
5. 5Augustine asks whether a faithful sexual union without intention of marriage or openness to children is a marriage, and distinguishes the faults of spouses from marriage itself.
6. 6Augustine grades marital intercourse (blameless for procreation, venially faulty from desire) and argues that the marriage bond, as a kind of sacrament, survives separation.
7. 7Augustine finds it a hard question whether a man who dismisses an adulterous wife may remarry, inclines to think not, and explains the firmness of the bond as a sacrament.
8. 8Marriage and continence are two goods, one better, not two evils; Augustine illustrates this with Martha and Mary, Susanna, Anna, and the Virgin Mary.
9. 9Marriage is a good for the sake of something else; it was necessary for the patriarchs, but now continence is the better choice.
10. 10Answering the objection that universal continence would end the race, Augustine says it would only hasten the city of God, and that now only the incontinent should marry.
11. 11Marriage itself is not a sin; what the apostle pardons is intercourse beyond the purpose of procreation, which marriage excuses.
12. 12Augustine ranks sexual sins and says the honor of marriage lies in chaste procreation and faithful rendering of the marital debt.
13. 13A chaste Christian wife is holy in body too; the unmarried are said to be holier because their attention is undivided.
14. 14Some married people also think of the things of the Lord, as Peter's instructions to wives and husbands show, but such marriages are rare.
15. 15Christians now free to choose continence should prefer it; the patriarchs married from duty, not lust, and would have embraced continence had it been offered.
16. 16Even a concubinage entered for children alone does not surpass marriage; the goodness of an institution is distinct from the conduct of those using it.
17. 17A marriage once entered among God's people can be dissolved only by death, even if it is childless; the patriarchs' plural marriages were a duty of their time.
18. 18Augustine compares intercourse with eating: both involve natural pleasure, both have lawful and unlawful uses, and the patriarchs used marriage as the apostles used food.
19. 19Present-day married Christians are not to be compared with the patriarchs, whose desire for children served the prophetic purpose of their time.
20. 20Augustine explains why the patriarchs could have several wives but a woman never several husbands, by analogy with many souls subject to one God.
21. 21Monogamy now signifies the future unity of the church under Christ; hence a cleric must be the husband of one wife, and a wife may never pass from a living husband to another.
22. 22The patriarchs sought children to prepare Christ's lineage, a greater good than marriage itself, as shown by Abraham's sacrifice and his servant's oath.
23. 23The law's purifications after intercourse, emissions, menstruation, and contact with the dead are signs, not proofs that these acts are sins.
24. 24The fair comparison is not between the patriarchs' marriages and ours but between their continence and that of Christian celibates.
25. 25Continence is a virtue of the soul that may exist as a disposition without being exercised, as with Job's patience and Timothy's abstinence from wine.
26. 26Christ ate and drank yet had the virtue of abstinence; so Abraham, though married, had continence in disposition as fully as John the Baptist had it in action.
27. 27Augustine tells a continent Christian how to answer the taunt “So you are better than Abraham?”: celibate chastity is better, but Abraham had continence in disposition.
28. 28Celibate chastity is better than married chastity, but persons must be judged by the virtue they possess, even if circumstances do not call it into action.
29. 29Obedience is a greater good than continence, so an obedient married woman is better than a disobedient virgin.
30. 30Obedience is the mother of the virtues; virginity is a counsel, chastity a command, so a more obedient wife is to be preferred to a less obedient virgin.
31. 31Abraham's obedience shows he would have given up marriage if commanded; Christian virgins should not think themselves better than the patriarchs.
32. 32Augustine sums up the three goods of marriage, offspring, faithfulness, and sacrament, the last making the bond indissoluble while both spouses live.
33. 33Augustine answers the Manichees: the patriarchs' plural marriages were not against nature, custom, or any command of their time.
34. 34Married Christians should not judge the patriarchs by their own weakness, and the continent should even place the patriarchs' marriages above their own resolve.
35. 35Augustine urges consecrated virgins to humility, reminding them that they will share the kingdom with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who married for Christ's sake.