I attended a series of week long courses over the summer at my sister's university Regent College in Vancouver. Due to the pandemic, I accessed all the classes remotely, and I submitted my essays online. When I signed up for the courses, I had planned to do them for credit towards my MA but when I got my course list for my MA I realised there was more courses I wanted to do than credits I have! So I decided to do the courses for credit, not to transfer the credits but to get me back into the university mindset.
I had always planned to publish my essays here when I got them back (if I passed - otherwise I wasn't going to publish that nonsense anywhere!) - but then life happened and I haven't blogged in a while! So this is the second of the three course submissions.
I took the course Augustine, Queer Theory and Christian Sexual Ethics with Dr Wesley Hill. I received an A- grade for for this essay.
This course was tough for me. I chose it in the hopes I could dig deeper around sexuality and the bible. I found it more interesting with regards to myself as a single Christian person, rather than with regards specifically to the LGBTQ+ community.
I enjoyed St Augustine's writings, and it confirmed my thoughts around celibacy before marriage, but it did not enlighten me around non-heterosexual relationships. I also wanted to learn about the bible and the recent discussions around gender.
I try to be an LGBTQ+ ally and I display my pronouns (she/her) to encourage a safe environment, but I haven't heard similar support from other Christians. I want to understand why and further investigate this.
This essay is the start of my exploration in this area.
As with my previous essays I have published here, I've kept wider spacing, and references can be found in footnotes at the bottom of the essay.
How might St. Augustine's Theory of Sexuality help us articulate a contemporary biblical evangelical theology of sexuality that takes seriously the concerns of LGBTQ+ people today?
Augustine is one of the most prolific Christian writers and his extensive works are still often relied upon. In his book ‘The Confessions’ he reflects on his own life. Augustine was not a Christian; he was unbaptised and a non-believer until later in his life. His mother was a devout Catholic, his father was earthlier – an example of this can be found in his writings:
“When at the bathhouse my father saw that I was showing signs of virility and the stirrings of adolescence, he was overjoyed to suppose he would now be having grandchildren, and told my mother so… But in my mother’s heart you [God] had already begun your temple and the beginning of your holy habitation…For, although I had not yet become a baptized believer, she feared the twisted paths along which walk those who turn their backs and not their face to you.”[1]
His parents had a single mind about Augustine and that was with regards to his career – it was clear from a young age that he was an exceptional thinker, and they wanted to be sure he achieved the best he could. He studied in Madauros, Carthage, and settled in Milan to teach.[2]
Despite his later teachings and writings, which I will discuss later, Augustine neither practiced celibacy nor married. Augustine succumbed to his flesh desires, however “[t]he feverish promiscuity, if that is what it was, resolved fairly quickly into something quite stable. Within a year or two, Augustine had settled down with a woman with whom he lived and to whom, in his account, he was faithful for the next fourteen years.”[3]
With this woman, who remains unnamed in his works, he had a child. They lived together first in Carthage and they moved with him subsequently settling with him in Milan. His mother soon joined them there, and she arranged for his marriage to a suitable match with a woman who “was almost two years shy of marriageable age”[4]. For the marriage to go ahead, his mistress had to leave. He mourned her parting, writing “[t]he woman with whom I habitually slept was torn away from my side because she was a hindrance to my marriage. My heart which was deeply attached was cut and wounded, and left a trail of blood.”[5]
Augustine suffered the loss of his mistress and quickly found the comfort of another. This did not satisfy him though, and in hindsight he writes “[a]s I became unhappier, you came closer.”[6] Approximately a year later, Augustine became a Catholic, “now baptized, he broke off his engagement to marry, resigned his professorship, [and] vowed himself to perpetual chastity”[7].
Thus began his writings on faith, two of which we will consider with regards to the sexual theory concerning LGBTQ+ people. Augustine’s history is pertinent, as it demonstrates his own struggles with sexuality – which many people globally (not restricted to LGBTQ+ people) still experience today.
The first of Augustine’s writings on faith we will consider was personally significant to Augustine himself: it is the debate of committed marriage against celibacy.
Saint Augustine wrote at length about marriage and what the purpose and goods of marriage are. Whether these are applied to heterosexual or homosexual relationships, the practical applications are still applicable today. Augustine outlined the three goods of marriage, these are: procreation, commitment to your respective spouse, and a true bond between two people (not always reliant on sexual intercourse).[8]
In ‘The City of God’ Augustine grapples with the theory that lust is an unwanted desire that cannot be avoided when having sexual intercourse; “[l]ust requires for its consumption darkness and secrecy; and this not only when unlawful intercourse is desired, but even such fornication as the earthly city has legalised.”[9]
He goes on to postulate that when “even conjugal intercourse, sanctioned as it is by law for the propagation of children, legitimate and honourable though it be, does it not seek retirement from every eye?”[10] No matter the situation, sex is taboo – and it still is. This troubled Augustine sufficiently to consider the alternative: celibacy.
Augustine agreed with the Pauline philosophy as written in 1 Corinthians “Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”[11]
With the birth and death of Jesus, death has been overcome. Traditionally, procreation was an extension of life – passing your name and genetics from generation to generation. In a world without death, there is no need for procreation. In Luke, the Sadducees ask Jesus if a man is married to a woman but dies before producing children he dies. His brother marries his widow, but he also dies before fathering a child. This continues until all brothers die and the widow dies without children – who would she be married to in heaven? Jesus replies “Marriage is for people here on earth. But in the age to come, those worthy of being raised from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage. And they will never die again. In this respect they will be like angels.”[12]
Ethicist Stanley Hauerwas explains “the ambivalence of the church toward marriage and family is grounded in the eschatological conviction that we live in the end times. The church as the community of that time is freed from the necessity of marriage. In other words, for Christians it is as good to be single as it is to be married.”[13]
Looking back at Augustine’s adolescent sexual awareness in the bathhouse and his wrestling with lust and desire, he traced this to Genesis and Adam and Eve’s first moment of feeling lust and shame after eating the fruit of the tree in the centre of Eden. Augustine decided to review the relationship of sex and lust and God’s intentions in paradise.
Unfortunately, Adam and Eve ate the fruit before they procreated in the fashion that God had originally designed for Eden. “In Paradise, Augustine argued, Adam and Eve would have had sex without involuntary arousal: “They would not have had the activity of turbulent lust in their flesh, however, but only the movement of peaceful will by which we command the other members of the body.” Without feeling any passion—without sensing that strange goad—“the husband would have relaxed on his wife’s bosom in tranquility of mind.””[14]
Augustine proposes that “by whatever passage menstrual flow can issue without such damage”[15] sexual penetration might occur. This image is difficult to comprehend for us in the fallen world. “[O]nce lust has been taken out of the picture, the picture looks blank to us because all the signifiers used to describe the scene are for us laden with lust.”[16]
In conclusion, in his personal life Augustine struggled with the choice between celibacy and marriage until he became Christian. The lustful desires still plagued him, and it prompted his research into the arguments for celibacy and his work on Genesis – how procreation was planned in paradise.
My personal conclusion is that celibacy appears to be the better choice. This conclusion is made from my experience as a single person – I have not yet met someone to make me believe that marriage is a viable option for me personally. Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians is sufficient for me. Devoting myself to the bible and the love of Jesus with a singular vision (agape), rather than divulging my focus with romantic love (eros) is an unambiguous choice for me.
I recognise this conclusion is personal and may be unwelcome regarding the sexual concerns of LGBTQ+ people today but is a conclusion that has echoed through time by many Christian thinkers, including Augustine himself.
[1] Henry Chadwick, translator. Confessions Saint Augustine, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008), 26-27 [2] Stephen Greenblatt, The New Yorker (2017) How St. Augustine Invented Sex (19/06/2017) Available from: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/19/how-st-augustine-invented-sex (15/08/21) [3] S Greenblatt, How St. Augustine Invented Sex [4] S Greenblatt, How St. Augustine Invented Sex [5] H Chadwick, translator. Confessions Saint Augustine, 109 [6] H Chadwick, translator. Confessions Saint Augustine, 109 [7] S Greenblatt, How St. Augustine Invented Sex [8] Ray Kearney translator. Marriage and Virginity Saint Augustine, (New York, NY: New City Press, 1999), 56-57 [9] Thomas Merton translator. The City Of God Saint Augustine, (New York, NY: Modern Library, 2000), 466 [10] T Merton translator. The City Of God Saint Augustine, 466 [11] 1 Corinthians 7:8-9 (NIV) [12] Luke 20:34-36 (NLT) [13] Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom (Nashville: Abingdon, 1991), 128 [14] S Greenblatt, How St. Augustine Invented Sex [15] John C. Cavadini, “Feeling Right: Augustine on the Passions and Sexual Desire” Augustinian Studies 36/1 (2005), 206 [16] J C Cavadini, Augustinian Studies, 207