The Good of Marriage
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH A NEW TRANSLATION VOLUME 27 THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH A NEW TRANSLATION RoY JOSEPH DEFERRARI Editorial Director Emeritus EDITORIAL BOARD BERNARD M. PEEBLES PAUL J. MORIN The Catholic University of America The Catholic University of America Editorial Director Managing Editor ROBERT P. RUSSELL, O.S.A. THOMAS P. HALTON Villanova University The Catholic University of America MARTIN R. P. McGUIRE WILLIAM R. TONGUE The Catholic University of America The Catholic University of America HERMIGILD DRESSLER, O.F.M. SR. M. JOSEPHINE BRENNAN, I.H.M. The Catholic University of America Marywood College MSGR. JAMES A. MAGNER REDMOND A. BURKE, C.S.V. The CathoUc University of America The Catholic University of America SAINT AUGUSTINE TREATISES ON MARRIAGE AND OTHER SUBJECTS The Good of Marriage, Adulterous Marriage, Holy Virginity, Faith and Works, The Creed, Faith and the Creed, The Care To Be Taken for the Dead, In Answer to the Jews, The Divination of Demons Translated by Charles T. Wilcox, M.M., Charles T. Huegelmeyer, M.M., John McQuade, S.M., Sister Marie Liguori, I.H.M., Robert P. Russell, O.S.A., John A. Lacy, and Ruth Wentworth Brown Edited by Roy J. DEFERRARI THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS Washington, D. C. IMPRIMATUR: of. FRANCIS CARDINAL SPELLMAN Archbishop ofNew York The Nihil obstat and Imprimatur are official declarations that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication is contained therein that those who have granted the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions, or statements expressed. Copyright © 1955 THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSI1Y OF AMERICA PRESS All rights reserved Reprinted 1969 (with corrections), 1985 First short-run reprint 1999 ISBN 0-8132-0967-6 CONTENTS THE GOOD OF MARRIAGE Introduction . 3 Text ....... 9 ADULTEROUS MARRIAGES Introduction . 55 Text: Book I . 61 Book II 101 HOLY VIRGINITY Introduction . 135 Text .... 143 FAITH AND WORKS Introduction 215 Text .. 221 THE CREED Introduction 285 Text ... 289 FAITH AND THE CREED Introduction 311 Text ...... 315 v THE CARE TO BE TAKEN FOR THE DEAD Introduction . 349 Text ....... 351 IN ANSWER TO THE JEWS Introduction . 387 Text ....... 391 THE DIVINATION OF DEMONS Introduction 417 Text 421 INDEX .... 443 VI WRITINGS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE VOLUME 15 INTRODUCTION HE PIONEER and pattern-setting treatise De bono coniugali has been called the most complete patristic n 1 consideration of the duties of married persons. Theologians considered it most authoritative down to the time of St. Thomas Aquinas; as late as 1930, Pope Pius XI quoted from it in his encyclical, Casti Connubii. St. Augustine wrote De bono coniugali in 401, as an answer to the false teaching of Jovinian which considered the married state equal to that of virginity. Pope Siricius and St. Ambrose had condemned this heresy before him, but it still was so rampant that many consecrated virgins were leaving their convents to marry. St. Jerome also had written his Adversus Jovinianum exalting virginity, but in doing so he seemed to have sacrificed the dignity and honor of married life. Therefore, St. Augustine felt that before he treated of virginity he should write on the good of marriage, both to prove false the charge of Manichaeism that was hurled against the Christian teaching and to refute Jovinian. By calling marriage a good, St. Augustine immediately refuted the chief charge of Manichaeism. For him, the good I E. Portalie, 'Augustin: Dictiollllaire de theoiogie catholique I 2304. 3 4 SAINT AUGUSTINE of marriage was threefold: offspring (proles), fidelity (fides), sacrament (sacramentum). He used this terminology so often that these goods have been called pillars or columns that support his doctrine. 2 To have children who would people the kingdom of God is the primary purpose of marriage. However, when Augustine spoke of the procreation of children, he was thinking also of their moral or spiritual procreation and education. The second good of the marriage contract is that of fidelity or faithfulness. This refers to the right that the spouse has over the body of his partner. St. Augustine noted that St. Paul called this right a power. The violation of this fidelity is adultery. Fidelity in general is such a good that in matters of little importance it is worthy of praise; even in evil contracts, if it is broken the violator is looked upon as more degraded because of this added malice. St. Augustine used the term for the third good, sacra mentum, with what De Ghellinck calls 'an incredible diversity of meanings .... It is not easy to determine the exact meaning that one ought to give to each of the examples that the ten large volumes of his works contain. The penchant of Augustine for symbolism and allegorical explanation pre disposed him, moreover, to the frequent use of the word "sacramentum" '3-for example, when speaking of the marri ages of Adam and Eve, the Jews, the pagans, Joseph and Mary, and the Christians. However, Pereira believes that in De bono coniugali St. Augustine attributes the word only to the marriage of Christians.4 This is easy to explain when we realize that the pagan world repudiated the idea of the indissolubility of marriage which is attendant on this teaching. Vasquez says that the saint never called marriage a sacra- 2 B. Pereira, La doctrine du mariage selon saint Augustin 40. 3 J. de Ghellinck, Pour I'histoire du mot 'sacramentum' I 16. 4 Pereira, op. cit. 173. THE GOOD OF MARRIAGE 5 ment in our sense of the term.5 Mausbach recognizes that the term usually referred to the indissolubility of marriage,6 as does Pourrat: 'St. Augustine calls the indissoluble bond "sacramentum," because it is the figure, the symbol of the union of Jesus Christ with His Church. It is in order to secure that most holy symbolism that Christian marriage has for its essential characteristics unity and indissolubility. For St. Augustine the bond which unites the Christian husband and wife is the sacrament of Matrimony, just as the sacerdotal "character" is the sacrament of Holy Orders.'7 Joyce writes: 'The blessing of children and the blessing of mutual fidelity belong to marriage even outside the Church. But the third benefit, the indissolubility consequent on its sacred symbolism (for "sacramentum" as here employed has this meaning, and is not used in its technical sense of "a sacrament") is, at least in its full perfection, peculiar to matrimony within the Catholic Church.'8 Ladomerszky considers sacramentum in the sense of (1) a property or symbolic characteristic of marriage; (2) a figure, sign, or symbol; (3) an indissoluble bond; (4) a seal or sanction. 9 To the threefold good of marriage St. Augustine added the following: the companionship between the sexes and the turning of concupiscence to the honorable task of pro creation. As to the morality of the marriage act, he was most explicit. When the act is performed for the purpose of generation, he stated, it is a good act and one that is perfectly lawful. However, intercourse other than for procreation he considered sinful. This teaching dominated the patristic and early scholastic periods. Its rigorism is rooted at least to some 5 G. Vasquez, Commentariorum ac disputationum in tertiam partem Sancti Thomae tomus tertius, De matrimonii sacramento, dsp. II, c. 5. 6 J. Mausbach, Die Ethik des heiligen Augustinus I 323. 7 P. Pourrat, Theology of the Sacraments 65. 8 G. Joyce, Christian Marriage 149. 9 N. Ladomerszky, Saint Augustin 116-121. 6 SAINT AUGUSTINE extent in St. Augustine's defective metaphysical psychology of human nature, with its attendant misconceptions of the character of concupiscence, as well as in his imperfect theory of the nature of original sin and, above all, of its. mode of transmission, which attributed to concupiscence a real in strumental causality.lO Like all other questions on marriage, this has been exhaustively treated and carefully explored from the time of St. Thomas on, and the strict Augustinian view has been modified in part. Another question raL'Sed in De bono coniugali (9, 15, 22, 24-27) is that of the polygamy of the patriarchs. The virgins and celibate men of St. Augustine's time were being challenged by the insidious questions: 'You, then, are better than Sara? You, then, are better than Abraham?' St. Augus tine showed how the difference in times called for a difference in action. The patriarchs were told to rear children for the people of God, but, after Christ said: 'Let him accept it who can,' the situation had changed. The patriarchs possessed the virtue of continence even though they did not show it in practice, just as Christ was temperate although He admitted that He came eating and drinking while St. John the Baptist came in a far different way. St. Augustine pointed out that obedience is the mother virtue and the ancients by their obedience served best in the army of Christ. 10 E. Sheridan, The Morality of the Pleasure Motive in the Use of Marriage 2. THE GOOD OF MARRIAGE 7 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY for the Treatises on Marriage and Virginity Texts and Translations: Sancti Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis Episcopi Opera Omnia, ed. J. P. Migne, in Patrologia Latina 40 (Paris 1841). Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, cd. J. Zycha, 41 (Vienna 1900). Oeuvres de Saint Augustin, lere serie: 2 Problemes moraux [Paris 1948]) 22·99 (De bono coniugali), 108-233 (De incompetentibus nuptiis), both tr. G. Combes; 3 (L'ascetisme chretien [Paris 1949]) 110-227 (De sancta virginitate), tr. J. Saint-Martin. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First series 3 (New York 1905), tr.