Against Jovinian 1.11–1.16

To the earlier discussion, in which he had taught that the believer ought not to depart from the unbeliever but remain in the marriage as faith had found them, and that each, whether celibate or married, should continue as he was found by Christ's baptism, he suddenly adds the parables of the circumcised and the uncircumcised, of slave and free, and under their figure discusses the married and the unmarried. "Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not draw on the foreskin. Was anyone called in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God. Let each remain in the calling in which he was called. Were you called as a slave? Do not let it trouble you; but even if you can become free, rather use it. For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is the Lord's freedman; likewise he who was called free is Christ's slave. You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men. So, brothers, let each one remain before God in that in which he was called." And first, since I think some will find fault with this interpretation, I should like to ask what the connection is, that while discussing husbands and wives he should suddenly pass to the comparison of Jew and Gentile, slave and free, and again, when this discussion is finished, return to virgins, saying, "Now concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord." What is the point of a comparison of Jew and Gentile, slave and free, between marriage and virginity? Second, how can "Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not draw on the foreskin" be understood? Can one who has once had his foreskin cut off draw it on again if he wishes? Next, in what sense is "For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is the Lord's freedman; likewise he who was called free is Christ's slave" to be explained? Fourth, how can he who commanded slaves to obey their masters according to the flesh now say, "Do not become slaves of men"? Finally, what has "Let each one, brothers, remain before God in that in which he was called" to do with slavery or circumcision? For it is even contrary to the previous statement. For if we have heard, "Do not become slaves of men," how can we remain in the calling in which we were called, when many believed while having masters according to the flesh, whom they are now forbidden to serve? Further, what has remaining in the calling in which we were called to do with circumcision, when the same Apostle cries out elsewhere: "Behold, I Paul tell you that if you are circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing"? It remains, then, that circumcision and uncircumcision, slave and free, are to be fitted to the preceding sense and depend on what goes before. "Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not draw on the foreskin." At the time you were called, he says, and believed in Christ, if you were called circumcised from a wife, and were celibate, do not marry a wife, that is, do not draw on the foreskin, lest you burden the freedom of circumcision and chastity with the load of marriage. Again, "Was anyone called in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised." You had a wife, he says, when you believed: do not think faith in Christ a cause of separation, for God has called us in peace. "Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God." For celibacy and marriage profit nothing without works, since even faith, which belongs properly to Christians, is said to be dead if it has no works; and on that principle the virgins of Vesta and the once-married women of Juno could be numbered among the saints. "Let each remain in the calling in which he was called." Whether or not he had a wife when he believed, let him remain in that in which he was called. And so he does not so much compel virgins to marry as forbid divorces. And as he takes from those who have wives the freedom to dismiss them, so he cuts off from virgins the possibility of marrying. "Were you called as a slave? Do not let it trouble you; but even if you can become free, rather use it." Even if you have a wife, he says, and are bound to her, and render the debt, and do not have power over your own body, and (to speak more plainly) are your wife's slave, do not be sad on that account, nor sigh over your lost virginity. But even if you can find some causes of separation, so as to enjoy the freedom of chastity, do not seek your own salvation at the cost of another's ruin. Keep your wife a little while, and do not run ahead of her as she lingers: wait until she follows. If you act patiently, your spouse will be changed into a sister. "For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is the Lord's freedman; likewise he who was called free is Christ's slave." He gives the reasons why he does not want wives to be deserted. Therefore he says: I command that those who believe in Christ from paganism should not abandon marriages entered into before faith; for he who believed while having a wife is not held in God's service as much as virgins and the unmarried are, but is in a way freer, and the reins of service are slackened for him; and while he is his wife's slave, so to speak, he is the Lord's freedman. Further, he who believed without having a wife, and was called by the Lord free from the slavery of marriage, he is truly Christ's slave. How great a happiness, to be the slave not of a wife but of Christ; to serve not the flesh but the spirit! For he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit. And lest by what he had said above, "Were you called as a slave? Do not let it trouble you; but even if you can become free, rather use it," he should seem to have slighted continence and handed us over to the service of wives, he adds a sentence to cut off all quibbling: "You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men." We have been redeemed by the most precious blood of Christ; the lamb was sacrificed for us; and, sprinkled with the hot dew of hyssop, we have boiled out all the phlegm of harmful pleasure. Since Pharaoh has died for us in baptism and his whole army has been drowned, why do we seek Egypt again, and after the manna, the food of angels, sigh for garlic and onions and melons and the meats of Egypt?

Having first discussed the married and the continent, he at last comes to virgins and says: "Now concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord, but I give advice, as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord to be faithful. I think therefore that this is good because of the present necessity, for it is good for a man to be so." Here our opponent revels with complete abandon, battering the wall of virginity with this as with a most powerful ram. "See," he says, "the Apostle declares that he has no command of the Lord concerning virgins; and he who had given orders with authority about husbands and wives does not dare to command what the Lord did not command. And rightly. For what is commanded is ordered; what is ordered must be done; what must be done carries a penalty if it is not done. For it is useless to command something that is left to the choice of the one commanded." If the Lord had commanded virginity, he would have seemed to condemn marriage and to take away the seedbed of humanity, from which virginity itself is born. If he had cut off the root, how could he look for the crops? If he had not first laid the foundations, how could he build the building and set on top the roof that covers everything? Mountains are overturned by the great labor of diggers; the earth is pierced almost to the depths to find gold. And when, from the tiniest grains, first by the smelting of the furnace and then by the skilled hand of the craftsman, a necklace has been made, it is not he who sifted the gold from the mud who is called blessed, but he who enjoys the beauty of the gold. Do not wonder, then, if amid the ticklings of the flesh and the incitements of vices, the life of angels is not demanded of us but taught. For where advice is given, the choice belongs to the one who offers; where there is a command, necessity binds the one who serves. "I have no command of the Lord," he says, "but I give advice, as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord." If you have no command of the Lord, why do you dare to give advice about something for which you have no order? The Apostle will answer me: "And do you want me to command what the Lord offered rather than commanded? He, the creator and potter, knowing the frailty of the vessel he had made, left virginity in the power of the hearer; and shall I, the teacher of the Gentiles, who have become all things to all men to win all, lay the burden of perpetual chastity on the necks of the weak at the very beginning of their faith? Let them first learn holidays from marriage, let them be free for prayer for a time, so that, having tasted chastity, they may desire to have always what they enjoyed for a little while." The Lord, tested by the Pharisees whether it was lawful under the law of Moses to dismiss wives, forbade it to be done at all. The disciples, considering this, said to him: "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry." He answered them: "Not all receive this word, but those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who were born so from their mother's womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have castrated themselves for the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive it, let him receive it." It is obvious why the Apostle said, "Now concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord": surely because the Lord had said before, "Not all receive this word, but those to whom it is given," and "He who is able to receive it, let him receive it." The president of the games sets out the prize, invites to the race, holds in his hand the palm of virginity; he points to the purest spring and cries out, "Let him who thirsts come and drink." "He who is able to receive it, let him receive it." He does not say, "Whether you will or not, you must drink and run"; but whoever wishes, whoever can run and drink, he will conquer, he will be satisfied. And so Christ loves virgins more, because they give freely what had not been commanded them. And it is a mark of greater grace to offer what you do not owe than to pay what is demanded of you. The apostles, considering the burdens of a wife, say, "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry." The Lord, approving their opinion, says: "You think rightly that it is not expedient for a man who is striving toward the kingdom of heaven to take a wife; but it is a difficult thing, and not all receive this word, but those to whom it is given. Some nature makes eunuchs, others the violence of men. I am pleased with those eunuchs whom not necessity but will has castrated. Gladly I receive into my bosom those who have castrated themselves for the kingdom of heaven, and for the sake of my service have refused to be what they were born." At the same time we must consider the sentence: "who have castrated themselves," he says, "for the kingdom of heaven." If the castrated have the reward of the kingdom of heaven, then those who have not castrated themselves cannot receive the place of the castrated. "He who is able," he says, "to receive it, let him receive it." It belongs to great faith and great virtue to be a most pure temple of God, to offer oneself wholly as a burnt offering to the Lord, and, according to the same Apostle, to be holy both in body and in spirit. These are the eunuchs who, thinking themselves dry wood because of their barrenness, hear through Isaiah that a place better than sons and daughters is prepared for them in heaven. Their type is Ebedmelech the eunuch in Jeremiah, and that eunuch of Queen Candace in the Acts of the Apostles, who for the strength of his faith obtained the name of a man. To these Clement too, the successor of the apostle Peter, whom the apostle Paul mentions, writes letters, and weaves almost his whole discourse about the purity of virginity; and after him many apostolic men, martyrs, and men illustrious for holiness and eloquence alike, whom it is very easy to know from their own writings. "For I think," he says, "that this work is good because of the present necessity." What is that necessity which, scorning the bond of marriage, seeks the freedom of virginity? "Woe to those who are pregnant and nursing in that day." Here it is not harlots or brothels that are condemned, of whose condemnation there is no doubt, but swelling wombs and the wailing of infants, and the fruits and works of marriage. "For it is good for a man to be so." If it is good for a man to be so, then it is bad for a man not to be so. "Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be loosed. Are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife." Each of us has his own boundaries: give me mine and keep yours. If you are bound to a wife, do not give her a bill of divorce. If I am loosed from a wife, I will not seek a wife. As I do not loose marriages once they are bound, so you should not bind what is loosed. At the same time we must consider the meaning of the words. He who has a wife is called a debtor, and in uncircumcision, and his wife's slave, and, what is the lot of bad slaves, bound. But he who is without a wife is first a debtor to no one, then circumcised, third free, and finally loosed.

Let us run through the rest, for the size of the volume does not allow us to linger longer on each point. "But if you take a wife, you have not sinned." It is one thing not to sin, another to do good. "And if a virgin marries, she has not sinned": not that virgin who has once dedicated herself to the service of God; for if any of these marries, she will have condemnation, because she has made void her first faith. And if he objects that this was said of widows, how much more will it hold of virgins, when it is not lawful even for those to whom it was once lawful! For virgins who marry after consecration are not so much adulteresses as incestuous. And lest by saying, "and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned," he should seem again to invite the celibate to marriage, he at once checks himself, and by adding something else weakens what he had allowed, saying: "Yet such will have tribulation of the flesh." Who are these who will have tribulation of the flesh? Those to whom he had made the concession above: "If you take a wife, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned; yet such will have tribulation of the flesh." We, ignorant of such things, thought that marriage at least had the joy of the flesh. But if those who marry have tribulation even in the flesh, in which alone they seemed to have delights, what is left for which they should marry, when there is tribulation in spirit and in soul and in the flesh itself? "But I spare you." I put forward, he says, the tribulation of the flesh, as though there were not greater reasons why you ought not. "This then I say, brothers: the time is short; it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none." I am no longer discussing virgins, of whose happiness there is no doubt; I come to the married. The time is short; the Lord is near. Even if we lived nine hundred years, like the men of old, still what would one day have an end and cease to be would have to be thought short. But now, since not so much the joy as the tribulation of marriage is short, why do we take wives whom we shall soon be forced to lose? "And those," he says, "who weep, and rejoice, and buy, and use this world, let them be as though they did not weep, rejoice, buy, use this world. For the form of this world is passing away." If the world, in which all things are enclosed, passes away, or rather the form and way of life of this world passes like a cloud, marriage too will pass among the other works of the world. For there will be no marriages after the resurrection. But if death is the end of marriage, why do we not turn necessity into will? And what is to be wrested from us against our will, why do we not offer to God in hope of reward? "He who is without a wife is anxious about the things of the Lord, how he may please God; but he who is with a wife is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided." Let us look at the differences between the cares of the virgin and of the husband. The virgin desires to please the Lord, the husband his wife; and to please his wife he is anxious about the things of the world, which will certainly pass away with the world. "And he is divided," that is, torn into many parts of anxieties and miseries. This is not the place to describe the straits of marriage and to exult in rhetorical language as in commonplaces. I think the matter has been treated more fully against Helvidius and in the book I wrote to Eustochium. Certainly Tertullian too, when he was still young, played with this subject. And my teacher Gregory of Nazianzus discussed virginity and marriage and set it out in Greek verse. Now I briefly point out that in the Latin manuscripts this passage reads: "The virgin and the woman are divided." Although this has its own sense, and I too have expounded it so, as the place required, yet it is not the apostolic truth. For the Apostle wrote, as we translated above: "He is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided"; and having settled this sentence, he passes to virgins and the continent and says: "The unmarried woman and the virgin thinks of the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and spirit." Not every unmarried woman is a virgin; but she who is a virgin is certainly unmarried. Yet for elegance of expression he could have repeated the same thing in another word, "the unmarried woman and virgin"; or certainly he wished to define what an unmarried woman is, that is, a virgin, so that we should not think harlots, joined in no fixed marriage, to be unmarried. What then does the unmarried woman and virgin think of? "The things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit." Even if there were nothing else, even if no fuller reward followed the virgin, this preference alone would be enough for her: to think of the things of the Lord. And he at once teaches what this thinking is: "that she may be holy in body and spirit." For some are virgins in the flesh, not in the spirit, whose body is intact but whose soul is corrupt. But that virginity is a sacrifice to Christ whose mind no thought has stained, nor its flesh lust. "On the contrary, she who is married thinks of the things of the world, how she may please her husband." As he who has a wife is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, so the married woman thinks of the things of the world, how she may please her husband. But we are not of this world, which lies in the evil one, whose form is passing away, of which it is said to the apostles: "If you were of this world, the world would love its own." And lest perhaps he should be thought to lay the very heavy burden of chastity on the unwilling, he at once adds his reasons for persuading, and says: "But this I say for your benefit, not to cast a snare on you, but for what is seemly, and makes for serving the Lord attentively, without distraction." The Latin language does not convey the proper force of the Greek: for in what words could one express pros to euschēmon kai euparedron tō Kyriō aperispastōs? That is why, because of the difficulty of translation, it is not found at all in the Latin manuscripts. Let us use, then, what we have translated. The Apostle does not lay a snare on us, nor compel us to be what we do not wish; but he urges what is honorable and seemly, and what makes one serve the Lord attentively, and be always anxious, and await the Lord's will ready, so that when he has commanded anything, one may at once, like an active and armed soldier, fulfill what is commanded; and do this without any distraction, which, according to Ecclesiastes, has been given to the men of this world to be distracted by. "But if anyone considers that his virgin," that is, his flesh, "is growing wanton and boiling over into lust, and he cannot restrain himself, and a double necessity lies on him, either to take a wife or to fall, let him do what he wishes; he does not sin if he marries." "Let him do," he says, "what he wishes," not what he ought. He does not sin if he takes a wife; yet he does not do well if he takes one. "For he who has stood firm in his heart, having no necessity, but having power over his own will, and has judged this in his heart, to keep his virgin, does well. So then both he who joins his virgin in marriage does well, and he who does not join her does better." He had said above, pointedly and precisely, "He who takes a wife does not sin"; here, "He who keeps his virgin does well." But it is one thing not to sin, another to do well. "Turn aside," it says, "from evil, and do good." The one we turn from, the other we follow; in the latter is perfection. But lest by saying, "and he who joins his virgin in marriage does well," anyone should think that our observation does not stand, he at once diminishes this very good and overshadows it by comparison with the better, and says: "and he who does not join her does better." Unless he had been going to add "does better," he would never have said first "does well." But where there is good and better, there is not one reward for the good and the better; and where there is not one reward, there are certainly different gifts. So there is as great a difference between marriage and virginity as between not sinning and doing well; or rather, to put it more mildly, as between good and better.

Having finished the discussion of marriage and virginity, steering between the two with careful moderation in his precepts, so as to turn aside neither to the left nor to the right but to walk on the royal road and fulfill the saying, "Do not be overly righteous," he again compares monogamy with second marriage; and as he had placed marriage below the virgin, so he places second marriage below first marriage, and says: "A woman is bound for as long as her husband lives; but if her husband falls asleep, she is free; let her marry whom she will, only in the Lord. But she will be happier if she remains so, according to my advice. And I think that I too have the Spirit of God." He allows second marriages, but to those who wish them, to those who cannot contain themselves, lest, having grown wanton against Christ, they wish to marry, having condemnation because they have made void their first faith; and he allows this because many will turn back after Satan. "But they will be happier," he says, "if they remain so"; and he at once adds his apostolic authority: "according to my advice." Further, lest the Apostle's authority should seem lighter, as a man's, he added: "And I think that I too have the Spirit of God." Where he calls to continence, there the advice is not a man's but the Spirit of God's; but where he grants permission to marry, he does not name the Spirit of God, but weighs out the advice of prudence, relaxing things for each as each can bear. In this sense all those passages are to be taken: "For the woman who is under a husband is bound by the law while her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of the husband. So then, while her husband lives, she will be called an adulteress if she is with another man; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law, so that she is not an adulteress if she is with another man." And that to Timothy: "I want the younger widows to marry, to bear children, to be mothers of households, to give the adversary no occasion for reproach; for some have already turned back after Satan," and the rest like these. For as he allows marriage to virgins because of the danger of sexual immorality, and makes excusable what is not sought for its own sake, so, to avoid the same sexual immorality, he allows second marriages to widows. For it is better to know one man, even if a second and a third, than very many; that is, it is more tolerable to have been prostituted to one man than to many. Indeed, the Samaritan woman in John's Gospel too, saying that she had a sixth husband, is rebuked by the Lord because he is not her husband. For where there is a number of husbands, there the husband, who is properly one, has ceased to be. In the beginning one rib was turned into one wife. "And the two," it says, "shall be in one flesh": not three or four; otherwise they are no longer two, if more. Lamech, the bloodthirsty murderer, was the first to divide one flesh between two wives; fratricide and second marriage alike were wiped out by the same penalty of the flood. Of the one, vengeance was taken sevenfold; of the other, seventy-seven fold. As far as they differ in number, so far they differ in guilt. How holy second marriage is appears from this, that a twice-married man cannot be chosen for the clergy. And so the Apostle says to Timothy: "Let a widow be enrolled not less than sixty years old, who has been the wife of one husband." This whole precept concerns the widows who are fed by the alms of the Church. And the age is prescribed so that only those receive the food of the poor who can no longer work. And consider at the same time that a woman who has had two husbands, even if she is old and decrepit and needy, does not deserve to receive the Church's dole. But if the bread of alms is taken from her, how much more that bread which came down from heaven, which whoever eats unworthily will be guilty of violating the body and blood of Christ!

And yet some interpret these testimonies I have set out above, in which widows are allowed to marry again if they wish, of those widows whom the faith of Christ found already bereaved of their husbands. For it would not be consistent, they say, for the Apostle to bid a woman marry another after baptism when her husband has died, when he has commanded even those who have wives to be as though they had none; and for this reason the number of wives is not fixed, because after Christ's baptism, even if she was a third or fourth wife, she is counted as the first. Otherwise, if after baptism, when the first dies, a second is taken, why not, when the second and third and fourth and fifth have died, a sixth and the rest? For it can happen, by some misfortune, or by the judgment of God cutting off repeated marriages, that a young woman takes several husbands, while an old woman is widowed of her first husband at the end of her life. The first Adam was a man of one wife; the second had none. Let those who approve second marriage show a third Adam, twice married, for them to follow. But suppose Paul did allow second marriages: by the same law he allows third and fourth too, and as often as the husband dies. The Apostle is compelled to wish many things that he does not wish. He circumcised Timothy; he himself shaved his head; he practiced the barefoot rite; he let his hair grow and cut it at Cenchreae. And yet he had rebuked the Galatians, and reproved Peter for separating himself from the Gentiles because of Jewish observances. So, just as in the other disciplines of the Church he became a Jew to the Jews, a Gentile to the Gentiles, and all things to all, to win all, so he allowed second marriage to the incontinent and did not fix the number of marriages, so that women, seeing that a second husband is allowed them after the death of their husband in the same way as a third and fourth is allowed, might blush to take another, lest they be compared to those married three and four times. For when one is exceeded, it makes no difference whether it is a second or a third, because one ceases to be monogamous. All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient. I do not condemn the twice married, nor even the thrice married, nor, if it can be said, the eight times married. I will add something more: I receive even a repentant fornicator. Whatever is equally lawful must be weighed on an equal scale.

But since he drags us to the Old Testament, and beginning with Adam comes down to Zechariah and Elizabeth, and then sets against us Peter and the other apostles, we too must run along the same tracks of the questions and show that chastity was always preferred to the work of marriage. Of Adam and Eve, this must be said: that before their offense in paradise they were virgins, but after the sin, and outside paradise, marriage came at once. Next, that the Apostle interprets this very saying, "For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be in one flesh," and at once adds: "This mystery is great; but I speak of Christ and the Church." Christ is a virgin in the flesh, monogamous in the spirit; for he has one Church, of which the same Apostle says: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church." If Christ loves the Church in holiness, in chastity, without any stain, let husbands too love their wives in chastity, and let each know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the passion of desire, like the Gentiles who do not know God. "For God has not called us to uncleanness but to sanctification": putting off the old man with his deeds, and putting on the new, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator, where there is not male and female, Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian and Scythian, slave and free, but Christ is all in all. The image of the Creator does not have the coupling of marriage. Where the difference of sex is taken away, and we put off the old man and put on the new, there we are reborn into Christ the virgin, who was both born of a virgin and reborn through a virgin. As for the saying, "Increase and multiply and fill the earth," it was necessary first to plant the forest and let it grow, so that there might be something that could later be cut down. At the same time we must consider the force of the words "fill the earth." Marriage fills the earth; virginity, paradise. And this too must be observed, at least according to the Hebrew truth: that when Scripture, on the first, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days, on completing the works of each, said, "And God saw that it was good," on the second day it omitted this altogether, leaving us to understand that the number two is not good, because it divides from unity and prefigures the covenants of marriage. That is why in Noah's ark all the animals that go in by twos are unclean. An odd number is clean. And yet in the number two another mystery is shown: that not even among beasts and unclean birds is second marriage approved. For the unclean go in by twos, and the clean by sevens, so that after the flood Noah might have something of the odd number to offer to God at once.