On the Good of Marriage by Augustine of Hippo
A Book Review and Critique
There are a lot of bad ideas floating around about virginity, sex and marriage. Some of those bad ideas come from the Augustine of Hippo in his book, “On the Good of Marriage.” Do you share some of those bad ideas? Read my review to find out.
Biographical Sketch of Authors
Augustine of Algeria, and later of Hippo, is arguably one of the most influential theologians among the African Fathers and the early Christian church. Augustine (354–430) was born in North Africa and raised by a strong Christian mother. In his effort to reconcile reason and faith, Augustine embraced Manicheanism1 during his early studies in rhetoric at Carthage. Later—during his appointment to the imperial court in Milan—Augustine was influenced by the teaching of Ambrose, he embraced Christianity, and was baptized on Easter eve in 387 AD. Augustine returned to North Africa, became a priest in 391, and was appointed Bishop of Hippo in 395; a role which he held until his death in 430 AD. Augustine’s writings shaped the Christian polemic against various heresies during the patristic era and influenced Roman Catholic and Protestant theologian alike.
Summary of the Contents
Augustine wrote, On the Good of Marriage, in part to refute the claim that the Roman Catholic doctrine of marriage aligned with the Manichean heresy which rejected the goodness of marriage. Augustine built his case on the assertion that marriage is the first union of friendship upon which human society is built (II.3)2. Despite competing views on the merits of intercourse prior to the fall, Augustine argued that the marital union itself is a good that must not be abandoned. Marriage is a means of ensuring fidelity (conjugal chastity and mutual submission) as it turns the youthful lust for sex into the good of procreation and provides an institution of social companionship between male and female. When the sacrament of marriage is violated by divorce, warns Augustine, fidelity must be preserved by forbidding remarriage even for the sake of procreation.
While marriage is a good, Augustine believed that self-restraint from sex was a greater good. This is because intercourse is not an intrinsic good like friendship or wisdom, but only a good for the sake of childbearing. Anyone who can avoid sexual intercourse to keep their focus on pleasing the Lord, therefore, has achieved a greater good. In the case of those who are ordained as clergy, their vows to God are a greater sacrament which must be preserved through virginal fidelity above the sacrament of marriage (XXIV.32).
In the difficult case where the couple cannot procreate, there is a difference between marriage under the Old Covenant and marriage under the New. For the holy fathers under the Old covenant, they were able to take a concubine in order to fulfill their duty to propagate the human race and preserve the promised line of Christ. In contrast, the sacrament of marriage in the New Covenant is indissoluble and fidelity must be preserved regardless of the couple’s infertility.
Thus, Augustine concluded, the fidelity of marriage serves as a sign of unity in the City of God (XVIII.21).
The virtue of intercourse, writes Augustine, was less about the physical act and more about the fidelity of mind and habit (XXI.25). Christ modeled fidelity through his own sexual abstinence, but also in his habit of eating and drinking which showed that fulfilling a fleshly desire is not inherently evil. Yet, one’s ability to remain chaste and single remains a greater good than being chaste in marriage (XXIII.28). Just as the number 60 contains the number 30, Augustine reasoned, the one who has the greater virtue of chastity without marriage has achieved the higher virtue. Chastity, however, is not the only moral good. A drunken virgin, for example, is morally inferior to an obedient sober married woman who has engaged in intercourse. Thus, concludes Augustine, marriage itself is never condemned in Scripture, but disobedience is never acquitted.
In summary, Augustine believed that marriage is a good for all peoples in that they procreate, remain faithful, and chaste. His argument that the integrity of the Old Testament fathers is preserved because they took other women, not out of lust or custom, but out of the obligation to procreate is worth consideration. In all cases, the Scripture makes clear where their acts were disavowed, and why Christians should not necessarily approve or imitate them today. For all God’s people, the created good of marriage is made greater by their commitment to preserve it in fidelity and as a sacrament. Thus, writes Augustine, the heresy of the Manicheans is refuted and the good of marriage maintained.
Critical Evaluation
Augustine’s purpose for writing On the Good of Marriage was to strike a middle ground between Jovinian doctrine—which held both marriage and virginity as equally holy estates3—and Jerome’s apologetic which seemed to align far more with the Manichean heresy.
For the most part, Augustine’s apologetic is effective in making a sound case for the good of marriage in its tripartite virtue of childbearing, fidelity, and sacrament.
Augustine’s philosophical bias against sexual intercourse is pervasive, but in this sense he was a theologian of his time. Contemporary readers may find a lack of biblical warrant for accepting Augustine’s premise that virginity was superior to marriage, Protestants will, no doubt, take issue with the Roman Catholic demand for virginal fidelity in the priesthood. Still, Augustine’s defense of marriage as a good is an important work that offered both a seminal apologetic which shaped the doctrine of the church and a framework for the Western view of marriage.
This book is a valuable read for Christians today as the West has slowly rejected Augustine’s tripartite framework for the good of marriage and reduced it to a legal contract of convenience. In an age where marriage has been reduced to nothing more than a Hobbesian social contract, the Christian reader will find succor in Augustine’s emphasis on marriage as a sacramental sign of Christ’s union to the church which was instituted at the creation of Adam and Eve.
Manichaeism , Dualistic religion founded by Mani in Persia in the 3rd century AD. Inspired by a vision of an angel, Mani viewed himself as the last in a line of prophets that included Adam, Buddha, Zoroaster, and Jesus. His writings, now mostly lost, formed the Manichaean scriptures. Manichaeism held that the world was a fusion of spirit and matter, the original principles of good and evil, and that the fallen soul was trapped in the evil, material world and could reach the transcendent world only by way of the spirit. Zealous missionaries spread its doctrine through the Roman empire and the East. Vigorously attacked by both the Christian church and the Roman state, it disappeared almost entirely from Western Europe by the end of the 5th century but survived in Asia until the 14th century. See also dualism (From Encyclopedia Britannica).
Page numbers are taken from St. Augustin: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises, edited by Philip Schaff, translated by C. L. Cornish. Vol. 3. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1887. 20 pp. $9.99.
Jovinian (died c. 405) was a Roman Catholic monk who rejected monastic celibacy
“Although the book written by Jovinian is lost, its general content can be established from the writing against it of Jerome (c. 342–420), an early biblical scholar. Jovinian taught that marriage is equal to virginity in God’s eyes. He also held that fasting is of no greater merit than eating with thanksgiving. In fact he said there is no scale of rewards in heaven. He taught, as did Helvidius, a fourth-century theologian, that Mary was not a perpetual virgin, but that she had other children by Joseph after Jesus’ birth. He was able to show from Jerome’s cynical letters that the church could not elevate virginity without at the same time degrading marriage.
Jovinian caused a stir in Rome. After his sermons, individuals who had formerly chosen virginity decided to marry. Augustine of Hippo (345–430) later tried to answer Jovinian with two books, the first on marriage and the second on virginity. Synods in Rome under Siricus (392), and in Milan under Ambrose (393), condemned Jovinian and his followers.”
J. Newton, “Jovinian,” in Who’s Who in Christian History, ed. J.D. Douglas and Philip W. Comfort (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1992), 385.