Augustine of Hippo on Marriage as Good and Holy

Saint Augustine had a mother who was a Catholic and a father who was a pagan. He was a teacher in literature in Rome and Milan who had joined the cult in early days though wasn’t that happy with their philosophies. After conversion to Christianity and getting baptized, he paid much interest in theology and philosophy where he had his own approach to Christian values. He wished that the world would be better if it had a single church(Brown, 2013).After he was ordained to be a priest, he started writing articles which are more than 100 and influences a lot of the medieval worldview. One of the most prolific articles in his big collection is about Marriage as a Holy union and good to the world. Hi views on marriage and sexuality are still vibrant and applicable today despite it being an article written centuries before.

In his defense, Augustine places marriage as one of the social creation of God where people will be united together because of that union. He continues to support God’s creation in that he had a reason to have both genders at the beginning of the world and sexual intercourse will be a practice to increase the world’s population. Because of this Holy marriage, two people of different genders come together as companions and share a family creating a strong bond of trust through being faithful to each other.

Saint Augustine had was a sect member and a pagan before converting to Christianity. Due to all the transformation with different approaches towards marriage, he could write on issues from a personal view since he had enough experience. He had seen enough through his life and wanted to change something in marriage. He wanted to compare marriage in the past to the present. His teachings on marriage are intimate, some needs to be developed while others need to be interpreted in a spiritual way.

According to Augustine, marriage is an intimate relationship of love and should go hand in hand with sexual intercourse of the partners to show sign of acceptance to each other. Through this, married couple increase their affection for each other and unifies the union to one thing which will bore fruits when children are a part of the union with love and trust. All these should be done with love and fidelity with unbreakable togetherness between the spouses.

He adds that marriage should be in a natural setting for recreation, with personal love from partners as an institutional matrimony with conjugal love to make children in trust to build a unifying bond between the two. The teachings had a lot of insight into the modern marriage situation that the partners are supposed to be controlled by matrimonial bond to solve marriage issues.

St. Augustine had his own controversies in relation to marriage especially with the Manicheans in his early Catholic life and the Pelagians later. For the Manichean doctrines, they view marriage as pro-sexual, undermining the man’s ability to value and respect the dignity of sex in marriage. For Augustine, he is defending procreative nature of marriage. The Pelagians viewed marriage in current human sexuality as being unproblematic. According to the Manicheans, marriage is evil since the body generally is the object of the devil, its work is evil and marriage being a part of the body which carries the soul is also evil. He believed in his writings that conjugal acts are holy since procreation is the holy-gods promise. That’s why he insists on the importance of sex in a marriage.

Augustine doesn’t see the value of marriage as only for procreating but also the aspect of personal reasons to individuals who are ready to come together as married couples.  It is not necessarily to have children as the main reason for marriage but also to fulfill their reasons for marriage(Tyson, 1999).Due to this belief, marriage is more of a natural association between the sexes in a mortal state. In his early days he emphasized on love as the primary goal and if by chance the couples don’t get children, there is “ordo caritatis” unity. Even in an old age of their marriage, love between husband and wife is still vibrant. He further adds that fidelity will give respect to each other and bodies of married people are holy if they respect, be faithful to each other and to their God.

It is through the greatness of understanding on marriage today on St. Augustine’s doctrine’s, that fidelity is one of the greatest values in marriage and is meant to be permanent which should be cherished and taken care of. Today, humanity has changed in the way they view on marriage. Modern man has found a comfort zone in marriage which initially was guided by certain principles than having the freedom to do whatever you want.

In many years immediately after the second council in the Vatican, some theological writers have been confined in believe of institutional marriage which should be replaced by a bit of person-centered approach. In the institutional understanding of marriage, children have to be born to make it get understood but Vatican council had another persona list role of approach. It is of great outlook on what is the relationship between the husband and wife free from many restrictions and enjoys marriage.

Augustine view on marriage is a traditional one and it’s viewed as past on institutional matrimony compared to the modern of personal fulfillment. For Christian in general, marriage is an institutional, of divine law from the human law.  It means that the human race won’t be able to change the fact that agreements and invention have been derived from God. It now suites personal.

It’s a reality that we should acknowledge that some slacker terminologies of St. Augustine when narrates of concupiscence looks like he is saying its simple presence involving a definite personal responsibility which is not so. What Augustine have is that it may be only be observed as wicked as it arises from sin and tempts to sin, where is not a sin in itself. It defines this clearly is a convinced, not good disposition or quality. This is also clearly reflected in the many texts where St. Augustine describes that every sin is forgiven during baptism, concupiscence though outstanding after its response

Nevertheless, someone has to think to the question of whether, in Saint Augustine’s state of mind, concupiscence if it’s simply to be related with sexual liking in itself while concretely in matrimonial, with that inclination which attends the physical unification between the bodies of the partners if they participate in the conjugal act. We are supposed to reason out things out progressively. Foremost, let us preserve in mind that the assumption of good minds is in relentless confusion; it sometimes improvements and develops; not commonly but it even changes fundamentally, directly above all, in the case of persons who experiences a very extreme transformation, getting from one thought of life of real human nature to another, that is totally altered.

It is very important to consider mostly the writings of his last years when he was at least mature and could define situations in the right way. He had already gone for theological studies and would thoroughly examine the landscape of concupiscence. This is the period of his anti-pelagian literature. On other twist on his life, particularly during his long disagreement with the Pelagian bishop Julian, who really deserves appreciation because the interaction between the two resulted to rise to Augustine’s writings., in the “De nuptiis et concupiscentia’wherever his fearin clarifying  certain more elusive characteristics of his thoughts helps us massively to get that believe with greater fastidiousness.

Julian had perverted St. Augustine’s criticisms on his concupiscence, though they disguised a damaging judgment about attraction stuck between the genders, or rather on sexual desire in spousal relations. Augustine strongly doesn’t align with Julian’s duties of ever condemning sexual transformations or unification or profitability: He questions the general behavior of married couples and their contact to show love and affectionate in public even before their children. Why they are ashamed to show who they are and the love of marriage they share. In his argument, there no doubt it lies partly in the authoritative nature of the sexual desire, as a result, an uncertain     component easily matures even into spousal sexuality. The uncertainty is realized in the very matrimonial practice. It should be from a practice of love but not an act of egocentricity. With the Centre, a stone is the self-giving and commitment to each other, packed with kindness and contemplation.

It is not ethical to use the other partner as an object to be exposed to one’s bodily cravings and deprived of the desire to love the other partner. Establish a violation against the heart of matrimonial admiration and self-donation. According to St. Augustine, Partners who naturally love each other are willingly conscious of this important component in their connection which involves purification, their relationship is consequently not to a certain degree which they can casually thought lessens themselves.

In addition to the sexy urge, besides being arrogant, tends to be undiscriminating; it can easily separate from love drawing a person in a course that love cannot work. An example is a single-sex who feels a dominant charm towards a married friend. Being married doesn’t outline attraction difficulties. A wedded person too can unexpectedly overcome by an unwanted and perhaps seemingly overwhelming sexual craving for a third soul. In between married people, the desire may come at a time when it cannot be tenderly satisfied, if the man cares for his spouse, he will mostly find himself drawn into this struggle. For example, he may discover that his wife isn’t into intercourse, and yet he goes on.

 

In his condition of concupiscence in which our contemporary state go together with the heavens of marriage within the society, it is transferred from one generation to the other by the quality of chastity. Augustine’s thoughts have been summarized in simple and in a single expression, where he differentiates “the goodness of matrimonial from the evil of bodily concupiscence, which is well used in married chastity” Consequently the original natural relationship of humanoid society as husband and wife. God didn’t form these separately by himself and link them together as strange from birth, but He generated the one out of the former, having set a sign also of the command of coming together during woman formation. They are merged one to the other side to side, who march together, looking at each other’s they walk. In love, there is also the association of companionship in kids, which is the one only worthy fruit, not only of the union of man and woman but of the sexual intercourse.

For Augustine, married chastity comes from his explanations on the Creation justification of Adam and Eve, their character previously and after the tumble. Before they had fallen, they were uncovered and yet sensed no humiliation (Gen 2, 25) not for the reason that they may perhaps not see, but since they felt zero in their members to make them embarrassed of what they saw. In the story of Genesis, God desired to produce all mankind out of one, for that reason, they might be believed in their social order not only by the resemblance of compassionate but also by the union of attractiveness. Due to this, the first natural connection of social humanity is man and wife. Neither did God generate these separately personally, joining them together as strange by birth, but He generated the one out of the other, creating a sign of the authority of the coming together. For they are amalgamated one to another sideways, who march together. After that, it monitors the connection of companionship in kids, which is the most valuable fruit, not the unification of male and female, but of the sexual intercourse.

In that state of assimilated nature, Adam and Eve detected nothing anarchic nothing on selfishness, just conjugal attraction stuck between them. Not ordinary character, but that of their thoughts and drive, which would have determined the circumstances of having conjugal relationships. All these would have matched abundantly and naturally to their own intelligence of common contribution in the application of their reproductive supremacy. According to St. Augustine, if there ought to be no evil, man would have been brought through organs of generation, not by submissiveness over other members to a silent and ordinary will.

Augustine reacts to Adam and Eve after discovering if their sinful nature, their sexual desire appeared to have shattered free from conjugality,anintelligence of humiliation resulted in them cover themselves, and they have clothed themselves. It is very significant to bear in mind that this embarrassment was just amid the two who were partners, and was only. It was exactly into their common association that humiliation had to go in. They were not humiliated to be partners, nor to prompt their matrimonial warmth, but they were embarrassed at a new constituent that exposed the pureness which they had experienced in their natural relationship.

 

 

 

References:

Brown, P. (2013). Augustine of Hippo: a biography. Univ of California Press.

Tyson, J. R. (Ed.). (1999). Invitation to Christian spirituality: An ecumenical anthology. Oxford University Press, USA.

Clark, E. A. (1986). «Adam’s Only Companion»: Augustine and the Early Christian Debate on Marriage. Recherches Augustiniennes et Patristiques,

Augustine, S. (1996). St. Augustine on marriage and sexuality (Vol. 1). CUA Press.

Hunter, D. G. (1994). Augustinian Pessimism?: A New Look At Augustine’s Teaching On Sex, Marriage, and Celibacy. Augustinian Studies,