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When we consider the modern sexual politics of the Catholic Church they are, in comparison to those of the broader secular world, quite conservative. What many don’t realise is that much of what makes up the contemporary sexual politics of the Catholic Church stems from the works and thinking of one man: St. Augustine. This essay will explore the life and works of St. Augustine and how it was that he profoundly affected the thinking of both the Catholic Church and the broader secular community right up to the present day.

Essential to understanding the works of St. Augustine is an understanding of his background leading up to his career as a member of the Catholic Church. Augustine lived from 354CE to 430CE and was born to a devout Christian mother and devout Pagan father in Thagaste, a Numidian town. His mother was earnest to raise her son a Christian and this, coupled with Augustine’s brilliant scholarly ability and the patronage of a wealthy benefactor led to his education in Carthage. Augustine took easily to education and he exhibited an insatiable lust for knowledge, coming quickly to grasp Latin and the finer points of rhetoric. Early in his life Augustine had become a teacher of Pagan rhetoric at Carthage, regardless of his mother’s wishes. Augustine was very much his own man who not only went against the wishes of his family (especially his mother) but seemed to often behave in an actively antagonistic fashion. Augustine had a self-professed and over-active libido and, much against his mother’s wishes, Augustine took a concubine with whom he had a child, named Adeodatus, meaning “the gift of god”. Riling against his mother’s desire for him to seek Christian spiritual guidance, Augustine joined a Persian derived sect called the Manichaeans who related evil to matter and the realm of the physical. His devotion to the Manichaeans was shaken, however, when he met Bishop Ambrose at the request of his mother. Ambrose answered many of the Manichaeans’ objections to the Old Testament and exposed many of the flaws of Manichaean thinking with an eloquence and intellectual strength that amazed Augustine. The influence of Ambrose on Augustine was profound, as Bainton notes “here was a man who grappled with the problems of faith and who showed that one could be an intellectual and a Christian”. During Easter in 387CE Augustine and his son were baptised by Ambrose. Soon after this Augustine became a monk and then, in 396CE became a bishop in the town of Hippo in Northern Africa.

Throughout his career Augustine never lost his love of the scholarly pursuits and spent much of his time reading about and writing on Christian theology. Much of this seemed to be fueled by his apparent obsession with his own sexuality and with the nature of human sexuality in general. This is best displayed in his reflective autobiography and spiritual treatise Confessions which first appeared in 397CE. This document formed the core of what would become Augustinian sexual politics and, eventually, Catholic doctrine. Central to Augustine’s notion of human sexuality is that of Original Sin. According to Augustine, man was irreversibly corrupted by the fall of Adam and is inescapably tied to his sin against God. Adam’s (and by association man’s) punishment for disobedience to God was one of forced disobedience to one’s self. This is essentially the notion that the human body and mind became separate and opposed to one another. The free will of the human mind could no longer exert itself to control the base desires of the flesh. This is most notably present, Augustine claims, in the sexual passions of human beings. Augustine observed that sexual arousal seems to occur automatically, regardless of what the mind desires. Augustine saw this as proof that the body’s disobedience of the mind often manifested itself in the form of lust. The central problem for this explanation of the uncontrollable sexual desires of mankind was explaining how it is that something that Adam did could condemn every subsequent human.

Unlike the archaic biological notion of preformationism (which suggested that a child existed perfectly formed in miniature inside of its parent’s sex cells, extending all the way back to Adam and Eve), Augustine contended that the entire human lineage had not existed within Adam but that the whole of Adam had been corrupted, including his semen. This meant that every child that Adam created was imbued with evil, sinful seed which passed his sin onto all of his children. Therefore all descendants of Adam (that being the entire human race) were created with fundamentally flawed semen and inherited the Original Sin from all of their descendants. The implications for Augustine arriving at this conclusion were enormous. If all human beings were inherently flawed and sinful, then that meant they could not possibly be trusted to administer to anything without the constant guidance of God. This meant that perfection or a utopian, peaceful existence was impossible for mankind. Furthermore, if we couldn’t trust our bodies to behave appropriately towards sexual desire (because of the rampant influence of lust) then how were we to know what kind of sexual interaction or attraction was safe in the eyes of God? The only safe solution, according to Augustine, was to only have sex for the purposes of procreation which meant that only sex within marriage was acceptable. Augustine contended that the physical act of sex itself was not sinful, but that it was inexplicably linked to a lustful sexual desire that caused man to lose his rational control of himself and his body. However, because God ordained the marital bond, the lustful experience of sex within marriage was far more acceptable than sex outside of marriage that wasn’t for the purpose of procreation.

There was naturally opposition to these views. The transition from the writings of one man to official Church doctrine was by no means an instant or unanimous one. Julian of Eclanum was appalled at the notion that human sexuality or semen could in any way be sinful or anything but completely natural:

God made bodies, distinguished the sexes, made

genitalia, bestowed affection through which bodies

would be joined, gave power to the semen, and

operates in the secret nature of the semen – and

God made nothing evil.

-As quoted in Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve and the Serpent, p. 132

So why would St. Augustine’s beliefs become adopted by the Catholic Church as doctrine? One possible explanation is that it would have been a very effective way for the Church to assert its place and power within society. If mankind cannot be trusted to control his base physical urges and requires a constant spiritual communion with God to save his eternal soul, then the Church is there, ready to offer spiritual guidance. If human beings cannot be trusted to govern themselves without the guidance of God, and the Church is the representative God on Earth, then that places the Church in a unique position of power. This alone could not account for the adoption of Augustine’s stance on Original Sin. Elane Pagels suggests that is the simplicity and compelling nature Augustine’s theory that allowed it to endure. In the face of human suffering, it answers the question of “why is this happening to me” by simply and efficiently removing the immediate blame from the individual and placing it on our collective ancestors, Adam and Eve. Augustine’s thinking tells us not only the cause of our suffering but also gives our suffering meaning and significance. The other advantage in this kind of thinking is that it removes much of the responsibility or guilt which stem from suffering or wicked behaviour by removing the blame from the individual. If good and evil are predetermined and we’re all sinners, then we can do anything we like as long as we ask God for forgiveness and absolution.

Let us now consider the legacy that St. Augustine has left and where it endures to this day. The Catholic Church still has a hard-line policy with regards to sex. Sex before marriage is unacceptable, sex is to be strictly for procreation and, as a result, contraception is strictly forbidden. Catholic priests are celibate, in order to turn their attention wholly towards matters spiritual. We need to understand, however, that St. Augustine’s thinking has had a wide-reaching and insidious effect on broader, secular society. We are very body conscious and have a number of nudity taboos (such as the generally negative view of public breast-feeding or nude swimming) and tend to frown on excessive premarital sex (especially in the case of women). While contraception is more acceptable in secular society it is often more for its uses as a means to prevent sexually transmitted diseases or allow for family planning amongst married people or couples in ‘committed relationships’.

In conclusion, the works and thinking of St. Augustine has had a powerful effect on both the thinking of the Catholic Church and broader secular society. The concept of Original Sin provided both a platform for the Church to assert itself within society and a mechanism with which the lay person could rationalise and understand suffering in their lives and in the world in general. Many of the central elements of Augustinian politics are preserved in the beliefs and social conventions of both the Catholic Church and secular society to this day. St Augustine may not be a figure of popular conversation but when we examine his life and his works we can see how profoundly one individual can personally alter the thinking of millions.

Further Reading

• Bainton, Roland, The Penguin History of Christianity, Vol. 1, London, Nelson, 1964, pp. 129-135
• Chadwick, Henry, The Early Church, London, Hodder Stoughton, 1968, pp. 216-236
• Pagels, Elaine, Adam, Eve and the Serpent,New York, Random House, 1988, pp. 98-150

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