Saint Augustine on Conjugal Love and Divine Love

The Thomist 68 (2004): 343-73 SAINT AUGUSTINE ON CONJUGAL LOVE AND DIVINE LOVE PERRY J. CAHALL Ohio Dominican University Columbus, Ohio NO PATRISTIC THEOLOGIAN has had a greater impact on Western Christianity than St. Augustine of Hippo. Wherever one goes in Western Christian intellectual tradition Augustine has been there already and has often laid the foundations for further reflection on the topics he addressed. One facet of St. Augustine's wide-ranging thought that has proved to be foundational for Western Christianity is his theology of marriage and sexuality. David Hunter has aptly written, "No Christian writer has exertedgreater influence on the development oi the Western theology of marriage than Augustine."1 The popular view is that Augustine has bequeathed to Western Christianity a highly negative view of conjugal life. Much modern scholarship has criticized Augustine for a supposed negative view of human sexuality and consequently a deficient view of marriage and marital love.2 Several scholars have accused Augustine of 1 David Hunter, "Augustine and the Making ofMarriage in Roman North Africa,"Journal ofF.arly Christian Studies 11.1 (2003): 64. 2 Examples include: David F. Kelly, "Sexuality and Concupiscence in Augustine," in The AnnualoftheSociety ofChristian Ethics, ed. LarryL. Rasmussen (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada: Council on Study of Religion, 1983), 81-116; David M Thomas, Christian Marriage: A Journey Together, Messages of the Sacraments5, ed. Monika K. Hellwig (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1983), 55; James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 80-82; John Mahoney, The Ma/Ung of Moral Theology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 45; Paul Ramsey, "Human Sexuality in the History of Redemption," in The Ethics of St. Augustine, ed. William S. Babcock, Journal of Religious Ethics Studies in Religion 3 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 343 344 PERRY J. CAHALL being opposed to sexual attraction, sexual intercourse, and sexual pleasure.3 Some claim that his view of sexuality may even have been tainted with latent Manichaeism.4 Others have accused him ofmaintaining afunctionalist view ofsexual intercourse according to which the conjugal act is legitimated only by procreation and has no value as an expression of love between the spouses.5 However, a number of scholars have pointed out positive aspects ofAugustine's theology ofmarriage.6 In particular, several 115-45. 3 John T. Noonan, in his celebrated book Contraception: A History ofIts Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), said that Augustine's understanding of marriage possesses Manichean and Stoic influences (166). Andrew Greeley has said that married couples in Western Christianity and especially in Roman Catholicism are living in the shadow of St. Augustine's negative view of sexuality ("Sex and the Married Catholic: The Shadow of St. Augustine," America 167 [1992]: 318). Theodore Mackin maintains that despite what Augustine claimed, for him "intercourse itself was sinful" ("Augustine on the Nature of Marriage," in Sexuality, Marriage, and the Family: Readings in the Catholic Tradition, ed. Paulinus Ikechukwu Odozor [Notre Dame: University ofNotre Dame Press, 2001], 173). Uta Ranke-Heinemann has leveled one of the mostvirulent attacks on St. Augustine's view of marriage and sexuality in her bookEunuchs for the IGngdom ofHeaven: Women, Sexuality, and the Catholic Church (NewYork: Penguin Books, 1991). She calls Augustine's conversion "a disaster for married people" (78), and says thatAugustine was "the man who fused Christianity together with hatred of sex and pleasure into a systematic unity" (75). 4 For examples of this critique see Bernard Haring, Free and Faithful in Christ, vol. 1 (1979), 512-14; Thomas C. Fox, Sexuality and Catholicism (NewYork: G. Braziller, 1995), 22; Vincent J. Genovesi, In Pursuit of Love: Catholic Morality and Human Sexuality (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1996), 116-18. 5 Eric Fuchs has contended that "although he was more sensitive than others to the social dimensions of the couple, [Augustine] was unable to conceive of the possibility that sexuality could hold tenderness, friendship, spirituality, and this lack of insight was very influential on the later tradition" (Sexual Desire and Love: Origins and History of the Christian Ethic of Sexuality andMarriage, trans. Marsha Daigle [Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1983], 117). Theodore Mackin contends that Augustine left...