Against Jovinian 1.36–1.40

But you will say: "If all were virgins, how would the human race stand?" I will pay you in the same coin. If all were widows or continent in marriage, how would the stock of mortals be propagated? On this reasoning nothing at all will exist, lest something else cease to exist. For example: if all were philosophers, there would be no farmers. Why speak of farmers? There would be no orators, no lawyers, no teachers of the other arts. If all were princes, who would be a soldier? If all were head, of what would they be called head, when the other members were lacking? Are you afraid that if more people seek virginity, the brothels will cease, the adulteresses will cease, and infants will not cry in the cities and villages? Every day the blood of adulterers is shed, adulteries are condemned, and amid the very laws, the axes, and the tribunals, burning lust reigns. Do not fear that all will become virgins. Virginity is a difficult thing, and therefore rare, because difficult: "Many are called, few are chosen." To begin belongs to very many; to persevere, to few. That is why the reward of those who persevere is great. If all could be virgins, the Lord would never have said, "He who is able to receive it, let him receive it"; nor would the Apostle have been fearful in urging it: "Now concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord." "And why," you will say, "were the genital organs created, and why were we so formed by the all-wise Maker that we feel a mutual ardor and long for natural union?" We are in danger from the shame of answering, and, as between two rocks, the Symplegades, as it were, of necessity and modesty, we suffer shipwreck on one side or the other, either of modesty or of our case. If we answer the proposition, we are covered with shame. If shame imposes silence, we shall seem to give ground and give the opponent occasion to strike. Yet it is better to fight, as they say, with eyes shut, like the blindfolded gladiators, than not to repel the aimed darts with the shield of truth. I could indeed say: as the hinder part of the body, and the passage through which the excrement of the bowels is discharged, is removed from the eyes and placed as it were behind the back, so this part too, which is below the belly, was made by God to discharge the fluids and drink with which the veins of the body are watered. But since the organs themselves, and the structure of the genitals, and the distinction between us and women, and the receptacles of the womb, made to receive and nourish the offspring, proclaim the difference of sex, I will answer briefly: then let us never cease from lust, lest we carry such members in vain! For why should a husband abstain from his wife? Why should a chaste widow persevere, if we were born only to live like cattle? Or what harm will it do me if another man lies with my wife? For as it is the office of the teeth to chew and pass what is chewed into the belly, and he commits no crime who gives my wife bread, so, if it is the office of the genitals always to enjoy their nature, let another's strength overcome my weariness, and let chance lust quench my wife's most burning appetite, so to speak. But what does the Apostle mean by exhorting to continence, if it is against nature? What of the Lord himself, who teaches the different kinds of eunuchs? Certainly the Apostle, who calls us to his own chastity, must hear consistently: "Why do you carry a male member, Paul? Why are you distinguished from the female sex by beard, hair, and the other qualities of your members? Why do your breasts not swell, your hips not widen, your chest not narrow? Your voice is rougher, your speech fiercer, your brow shaggier. In vain you have all these things of men if you do not use the embrace of women." I am compelled to say something and become a fool; but you have compelled me to dare to speak. Our Lord and Savior, who, though he was in the form of God, deigned to take the form of a servant, becoming obedient to the Father unto death, even death on a cross: what need was there for him to be born with those members which he was not going to use? He was even circumcised, to show his sex. Why did he, by his love, castrate John the apostle and John the Baptist, whom he had caused to be born men? We, then, who believe in Christ, let us follow Christ's examples. "And if we had known him according to the flesh, now we no longer know him according to the flesh." Certainly in the resurrection the substance of our bodies will be the same that we now use, though greater in glory. For the Savior too, after the underworld, had the very body in which he was crucified, so much so that he showed the hands pierced with the nails and the wound in the side. Further, if he entered through shut doors, which the nature of human bodies does not allow, then we must deny that Peter and the Lord had true bodies, because they walked on the water, which is against nature. "In the resurrection of the dead they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but will be like the angels." What others will be later in heaven, virgins have begun to be on earth. If the likeness of the angels is promised us (and among the angels there is no difference of sex), either we shall be without sex, as the angels are, or certainly, as is clearly proved, rising in our own sex, we shall not perform the function of sex.

But what are we doing with arguments, and why do we want to overcome the opponent's propositions with clever replies? "The old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." I will run through the sayings of the apostles; and as I added brief little explanations to the examples of Solomon for ease of understanding, so now too I will go over the examples of Christian chastity and continence, and of many testimonies make, as it were, one body, so as to leave out nothing that concerns chastity and yet avoid the tedium of excessive length. Among other things the apostle Paul writes to the Romans: "What fruit, then, did you have at that time in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, set free from sin and made slaves of God, you have your fruit in sanctification, and the end, eternal life." I think the end of marriage too is death. But the fruit of sanctification, which belongs to virginity or to continence, is repaid with eternal life. And then: "So, my brothers, you too have been put to death to the law through the body of Christ, that you may belong to another, who rose from the dead, that we may bear fruit for God. For when we were in the flesh, the passions which came through the law worked in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the law of death, in which we were held, so that we serve in newness of the spirit and not in oldness of the letter." "When," he says, "we were in the flesh," and not in newness of the spirit but in oldness of the letter, we did the things of the flesh and bore fruit for death. But now, because we have died to the law through the body of Christ, let us bear fruit for God, that we may belong to him who rose from the dead. And in another place too, after saying beforehand, "I know that the law is spiritual," and after discussing at length the violence of the flesh, which often drives us to do what we do not want, he finally added: "Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord." And again: "So then I myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin." And: "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh. For the law of the spirit in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death." And more plainly in what follows he teaches that Christians do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit, saying: "For those who are according to the flesh mind the things of the flesh; but those who are according to the spirit, the things of the spirit. For the prudence of the flesh is death, but the prudence of the spirit is life and peace; because the prudence of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor can it be. And those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you," and the rest, up to the place where he says: "So then, brothers, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." If the prudence of the flesh is enmity against God, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God, I think that those who serve the marital duty love the prudence of the flesh and are in the flesh. Drawing us back from this and joining us to the spirit, the Apostle then says: "I beseech you, brothers, by the mercy of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, good and acceptable and perfect. For I say, through the grace given to me, to all who are among you: not to think more highly than one ought to think, but to think with a view to chastity" (not "to sobriety," as is wrongly read in the Latin manuscripts; but "to think," he says, "with a view to chastity," for in Greek it is written eis to sōphronein). Let us consider the Apostle's sentence: "Be reformed," he says, "in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, good and acceptable and perfect." What he says is of this kind: God indeed allows marriage, allows second marriage, and, if need be, prefers even a third marriage to sexual immorality and adultery. But we who ought to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, our reasonable service, should consider not what God allows but what he wills, so that we may prove what is the will of God, good and acceptable and perfect. Therefore what he allows is neither good nor acceptable nor perfect. And he gives the reasons why he urges this: "Knowing the time, that it is now the hour for us to rise from sleep. For now our salvation is nearer than when we believed. The night is far gone, and the day is at hand." And at the end: "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in its desires." The will of God is one thing, his indulgence another. That is why, writing to the Corinthians, he says: "I, brothers, could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal, as to little ones in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not food; for you were not yet able, and even now you are not able; for you are still carnal." He who is natural and does not receive the things of the Spirit of God (for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually judged) is nourished not with the food of perfect chastity but with the crude milk of marriage. "As by a man came death, so by a man the resurrection of the dead. As in Adam we all die, so in Christ we shall all be made alive." We served the old Adam under the law; let us serve the new Adam in the Gospel. "For the first man Adam became a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit. The first man was from the earth, earthly; the second man from heaven, heavenly. As was the earthly, so are those who are earthly; and as is the heavenly, so are those who are heavenly. As we have borne the image of the earthly, let us also bear the image of the heavenly. But this I say, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God, nor will corruption possess incorruption." This is so clear that no explanation can make it plainer: "Flesh and blood," he says, "cannot possess the kingdom of God, nor corruption incorruption." If corruption belongs to all intercourse, while incorruption belongs properly to chastity, marriage cannot possess the rewards of chastity. "For we know that if the earthly house of this dwelling is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. In this we groan, longing to be clothed over with our dwelling which is from heaven." For we long to depart from the body and to dwell with Christ; that is why we strive most earnestly, whether in the body or out of the body, to please God. And to set out more fully what kind of people he did not want them to be, he teaches in another place, saying: "For I betrothed you to one husband, to present a chaste virgin to Christ." And if you wish to refer this to the whole Church of believers, and to include in this betrothal to Christ married women, the twice married, widows, and virgins, this too tells for us. For while he invites all to chastity and to the reward of virginity, he shows that virginity is better than all the other grades. And again to the Galatians: "By the works of the law," he says, "no flesh will be justified." Marriage too is among the works of the law; that is why in the law those who have no children are cursed. And if marriages are allowed even in the Gospel, it is one thing to grant indulgence to weakness, another to promise rewards to virtues.

I too will say to my marriage-mongers, who after chastity and long continence go into heat for intercourse and run riot like cattle: "Are you so foolish that, having begun in the spirit, you are now being perfected in the flesh? Have you suffered so much in vain?" When the Apostle loosens the knots of continence for some and gives the reins to those who are running, he does it because of the weakness of the flesh. Writing against it he says again: "Walk by the spirit, and you will not fulfill the desire of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh." There is no need now to speak of the works of the flesh, because it is long, and whoever wishes can easily take them from the Apostle's letter. I will speak only of the spirit, whose fruits are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, continence. Continence, like a most solid foundation and a lofty roof, supports and protects all the virtues of the spirit. "Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ's have crucified their flesh with its vices and lusts. If we live by the spirit, let us also walk by the spirit." We who have crucified our flesh with Christ, with its passions and desires, why do we long to do again the things of the flesh? "Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. He who sows in his flesh will from the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows in the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life." I think that he who has a wife, as long as he comes together again lest Satan tempt him, sows in the flesh and not in the spirit. And he who sows in the flesh (it is not I but the Apostle who says it) reaps corruption. "God the Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him." "We walked in the lusts of the flesh, doing its will and that of our thoughts, and were children of wrath like the rest. But now he has raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus," that we may put off, according to our former way of life, the old man, which is corrupted according to the desires of error, and that blessing may be fitted to us with which he concludes the mystical Letter to the Ephesians: "Grace be with all of you who love the Lord in incorruption." "Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also await the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, who will transfigure the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory." "Whatever things, then, are true, whatever are chaste, whatever are just," whatever belong to chastity, to these let us cling, these let us follow. "Christ has reconciled us to God the Father in his body through death, and has presented us holy and blameless and without any reproach before himself; in whom also we were circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in putting off the body of the flesh, but with the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, in which we also rose with him." "If, then, we have risen with Christ, let us seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; let us set our minds on things above, not on things on the earth. For we have died, and our life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ our life appears, then we too will appear with him in glory." "No one serving as a soldier of God entangles himself in worldly affairs, so that he may please him who chose him." "For the grace of God our Savior has appeared to all people, training us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires, and to live chastely and justly and godly in the present age."

The day would fail me if I wished to recall all the Apostle's precepts on chastity. These are the things of which the Lord spoke to the apostles: "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when that Spirit of truth comes, he will teach you all truth." After the cross of Christ, at once in the Acts of the Apostles the one house of Philip the evangelist produces a team of four virgin daughters, so that Caesarea, in which the Church from the Gentiles had been dedicated through the centurion Cornelius, might also furnish examples of virgin girls. And though the Lord said in the Gospel, "The law and the prophets were until John," these, because they were virgins, are reported to have prophesied even after John. For those who had shone with the brightness of virginity could not be held by the law of the Old Testament. Let us pass to James, who was called the brother of the Lord, a man of such holiness and justice, and of perpetual virginity, that Josephus too, the historian of the Jews, reports that Jerusalem was overthrown because of his murder. He, the first bishop of the Church of believers from the Jews at Jerusalem, to whom Paul went with Titus and Barnabas, says in his letter: "Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. Of his own will he begot us by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures." The virgin teaches virginity mystically. Every perfect gift comes down from above, where there are no marriages; and it comes down not from just anyone, but from the Father of lights, who says to the apostles, "You are the light of the world"; with whom there is no difference of Jew or Gentile, nor does that shadow which was in the law press upon those who believed from the nations; but he begot us by the word, and by the word of truth, because a shadow, an image, and a kind of likeness of the truth went before in the law, "that we should be firstfruits of his creatures." And as he, the firstborn from the dead, raised in himself all who were dead, so he, the virgin, dedicated in himself, the virgin, the firstfruits of his virgins. Let us consider also what Peter thinks of the calling of the Gentiles: "Blessed," he says, "be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has begotten us again to a hope of life through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are guarded by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." Where an inheritance is proclaimed incorrupt and undefiled and unfading, prepared in heaven and reserved for the last time, and the hope of eternal life, when they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, there in other words the privileges of virginity are described. For in what follows he teaches the same: "Therefore, girding up the loins of your mind, being perfectly watchful, hope for the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As children of obedience, do not be conformed to the former desires of your ignorance, but, according to him who called you, the Holy One, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, 'Be holy, for I am holy.'" For we were not redeemed with corruptible gold and silver, but with the precious blood of the spotless Lamb, Jesus Christ, so that we may purify our souls in obedience to the truth, born again not of corruptible intercourse but of incorruption, through the word of the living and abiding God; and like living stones we may be built into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices through Christ our Lord. "For we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of possession." Christ died for us in the flesh. Let us arm ourselves with the same way of life as Christ, since he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so that we may spend the rest of our time in the flesh not in the desires of men but in the will of God. For the time past suffices for us, when we walked in debauchery and desires and the other vices. He has given us the great and precious promises of virginity, so that through it we may become partakers of the divine nature, fleeing the corrupting lust that is in the world. "The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous to be punished on the day of judgment, especially those who walk after the flesh in the lust of defilement and despise authority, bold and willful." For these, like irrational beasts, are bent on the belly and lust, blaspheming, and they will be corrupted in their own corruption and receive debauchery as the wages of iniquity: men who count unrighteousness, filth, and stains a delight, thinking of nothing but pleasures; who have eyes full of adultery and insatiable lust, and deceive souls not yet strong in the love of Christ. For they speak swelling words and easily ensnare the untaught with the allurements of the flesh, promising them freedom when they themselves are slaves of vices, debauchery, and corruption. For each is subject to the passion by which he is overcome. "For if, having escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Savior Jesus Christ, they are again overcome by what they had overcome before, the last state has become worse for them than the first. And it was better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back and abandon the holy commandment delivered to them." And in them that most true proverb is fulfilled: "The dog has returned to its vomit, and the washed sow to wallowing in the mire." I did not wish to set out the whole passage of Peter's second letter, so as not to be long, but only to show by the prophecy of the Holy Spirit that the teachers and the heresy of this time were foretold. Indeed he marks them still more plainly, saying: "For in the last days scoffers will come, leading astray, walking according to their own desires," and the rest.

The apostolic word described Jovinian speaking with swollen cheeks and weighing out inflated words, promising freedom in heaven when he himself is a slave of vices and debauchery, a dog returning to his vomit. For while he boasts of being a monk, yet after the dirty tunic, the bare feet, the coarse bread, and water to drink, he betakes himself to white clothes, sleek skin, honeyed wine and elaborate meats, the sauces of Apicius and Paxamus, the baths too and the frying-pan and the cookshops; so it is plain that he prefers earth to heaven, vices to virtues, belly to Christ, and thinks the purple of his complexion the kingdom of heaven. And yet let this handsome monk, fat, sleek, whitened, always strutting like a bridegroom, either marry a wife, to prove virginity equal to marriage; or, if he does not marry, he argues against us in words in vain, since in deed he is with us. John too agrees with the same words: "Do not love the world or the things 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 desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the pride of this life, which is not of the Father but of the world. And the world passes away, and its desire; but he who does the will of God abides forever." "I write you a new commandment, which is most true both in Christ and in us, because the darkness has passed away and the light already shines." And again: "Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. But we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And everyone who has this hope makes himself chaste, as he too is chaste." "In this our love is perfected, that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world." The Letter of Jude too signifies something similar: "hating even the garment defiled by the flesh." Let us read John's Apocalypse, and there we shall find the Lamb on Mount Zion, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand who are sealed, having his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads, who sing a new song, and no one can sing that song except those who were bought from the earth. "These are those who did not defile themselves with women, for they remained virgins. These follow the Lamb wherever he goes; for they were bought from among men as firstfruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found, and they are without blemish." From each of the tribes, except the tribe of Dan, in place of which the tribe of Levi is put, twelve thousand sealed virgins are said to be going to believe, who were not defiled with women. And lest we should think this was said of those who have not known harlots, he at once added: "for they remained virgins." From this he shows that all who did not remain virgins are defiled in comparison with the purest and angelic chastity, and with our Lord Jesus Christ himself. These are they who sing the new song, which no one can sing but a virgin. These are the firstfruits of God and the Lamb, and without blemish. If virgins are the firstfruits of God, then widows and those continent in marriage will come after the firstfruits, that is, in the second and third rank. Nor could the lost people be saved before it had offered such sacrifices of chastity to God and reconciled the spotless Lamb with the purest victims. It would be endless to expound the mystery of the Gospel of the ten virgins, five foolish and five wise. I say only this now: that as virginity alone does not save without the other works, so all works without virginity, purity, continence, chastity are imperfect. Hence what our opponent objects, that the Lord was at Cana of Galilee and celebrated the festivities of a wedding when he turned the water into wine, cannot hinder us at all. For I will answer this very briefly: he who was circumcised on the eighth day, and for whom a pair of turtledoves and two young pigeons were offered on the day of purification, approved, among other things, the Jewish custom before he suffered, so as not to seem to give them grounds for killing him justly, as one destroying the law and condemning nature. And yet this too tells for us. For he who came once to a wedding taught that one should marry once. And it could harm virginity only if we did not put marriage in the third rank, after virginity and the chastity of widowhood. But as it is, since it belongs to heretics to condemn marriages and despise God's creation, whatever he says in praise of marriage we gladly hear. For the Church does not condemn marriages but subordinates them; does not reject them but regulates them; knowing, as we said above, that in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and earthenware, some for honor and some for dishonor; and that whoever cleanses himself will be a vessel of honor, useful and prepared for every good work.