Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Studies in Justin, Clement, and Origen
Book by Henry Chadwick; Oxford University Press, 1984

Three goods of marriage, Augustine
(offspring, fiedilty, sacrament)
The Treatise of Marriage, 401
Holy Viriginity


augustine was with this woman for 15 years, some discussion about thier sexuality practicing contraception,

anti reproductive stance of the manicheans

marriage as an example of free will, but if that was the case, is not marrying also the same way, one can chose to sin, but why did augustine not marry him

from elizabeth clarks intro to the anthology st augustine on sex and marriage.

David G. Hunter
Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity:
The Jovinianist Controversy
Oxford Early Christian Studies


From A Note on Origen's Self-Mutilation
Author(s): R. P. C. Hanson
Source: Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Jun., 1966), pp. 81-82
Published by: BRILL
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1582228
Accessed: 28/11/2009 14:47

The Acts of John 53 and 54, a mid-second century legendary ac-
count made by one Leucius Charinus of a markedly Gnostic turn of
mind. Here a young man is described as castrating himself shortly after
his conversion. John rebukes him gently, saying that he should have
cut off the impulse and not the members. Compare Justin, Apology 1,
29, 2-3, where a young Christian is recorded as asking permission of
the governor of Alexandria to perform the same act.1


Charles Wilcox, introduction to the good of marriage
The virgins and celibates of ST Augustines time were being challenged by the insidious quesitons: You, then are better then Sara, You then are better then Abraham


From Caroyln Dimshaw's Eunuch Hermentuics:

"There is in Augustine's writing a deep strain of belief in the natural relation of words and their referents. Die Diealectia includes a chapter on the origins of words...this fanscaiton with he infnats process of learning language in the confessions suggests a profound desire for verbal signs rooted in the physical, in the body, al anugage understood by all humans..."

From the Council of Nicea:
Canon 1:

Canon 1

If any one in sickness has been subjected by physicians to a surgical operation, or if he has been castrated by barbarians, let him remain among the clergy; but, if any one in sound health has castrated himself, it behooves that such an one, if [already] enrolled among the clergy, should cease [from his ministry], and that from henceforth no such person should be promoted. But, as it is evident that this is said of those who wilfully do the thing and presume to castrate themselves, so if any have been made eunuchs by barbarians, or by their masters, and should otherwise be found worthy, such men the Canon admits to the clergy.

Celibate Pleasures:Masculinity,Desire, and
Asceticismin Augustine
ERIN SAWYER
Department of Religious Studies
Stanford University
1995, vol. 6, no. 1]
[Journalof theHistory Sexuality
of


From
Augustine is a complex figure who writes a dynamic of pleasure and
eroticism into many of his texts, ranging from his more abstract essays
on the human will, the concupiscence of the soul, and the life of Adam
and Eve in Eden, to his deeply personal Confessions.He centers many
theological discourses and debates with his contemporaries around sex-
ual questions and their ramifications for the life of the human subject in
the worldly city.

Augustine's ideal state is not a quietistic, contemplative asceticism in
which sexuality has been stilled; rather, Augustine creates a new type of
asceticism that turns from the pleasures of the body toward the pleasures
of the struggle against sexuality carried out through foregrounding
sexuality.

Margaret Miles, Desire and Delight: A New Reading of Augustine's "Confessions"
(New York, 1991),

4Peter Brown, in his chapter on Augustine in his The Body and Society:Men, Women,
and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988)


Frustrated by his inability to rationally explicate this irrational moment of
orgasm, Augustine produces more and more discourse and centers more
theological debates around the problem of sexual excess in an unend-
ing spiral.

Augustine, on the other hand, sees sexuality, albeit a regu-
lated sexuality, as a central feature of life in Paradise had the fall from
grace not occurred.

While Adam and Eve can be ashamed by their nakedness, Adam incurs
a heightened degree of shame because of his disobedient member. This
shamefulness produced by the splitting between the will and the body
leads Augustine to lament, "Where does that come from which, unless
resisted, will not permit man to be chaste? ... It rises up, I repress it; it
resists, I restrain it; it fights, I oppose it (18)

Augustine's discourses illustrate that the real problem is located
in the competition between the two poles of animal lust and divine will
within the same body. (20)


To read the Confessionsas a failure on its own terms, however, is to
overlook the crucial metaphor of battle and struggle. Augustine cannot
come to a total unification of the will and a complete sexual asceticism
because the spirals of discourse on sexuality he generates prevent the
possibility of coming to rest. More specifically, Augustine revels in the
struggles against desire and intensifies these struggles within his texts in
order to produce sharp conflicts between the spirit and flesh. I am not
disputing the contention that Augustine may have had certain types of
physical desires, but I am focusing on how he reproduces his erotic long-
ings on the level of text and discourse. Augustine does not limit his con-
fessions to vague discussions about his lustful feelings. Rather, he feels
the need to confess even the most private secrets-"I exhausted myself
in depravity, in the pursuit of an unholy curiosity ... I defied you even
so far as to relish the thought of lust, and gratify it too, within the walls
of your church during the celebration of your mysteries" (3.3.57)-
events that must have haunted him well into his converted, ascetic years (26)