Saint Augustine — "Sexual abstinence, to avoid lust, is rare among married partners."
Sexual abstinence, to avoid lust, is rare among married partners.
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More from Saint Augustine
"He who is not jealous is not in love."
"Having children is the only worthy fruit of sexual intercourse."
"Woman is subject to man."
"The will is truly free, when it is not the slave of vices and sins."
"For pride is the beginning of sin."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Married couples rarely choose sexual restraint to discipline their desires. Even within marriage—the only sanctioned outlet for sex in Augustine's theology—most partners act from lust rather than higher purpose. Genuine abstinence inside marriage, deliberately avoiding sex to resist carnal appetite rather than for practical reasons, is vanishingly uncommon. Human sexual desire is so powerful it persists and dominates even where it is legally and morally permitted.
Relevance to Saint Augustine
Augustine lived with a concubine for over thirteen years and fathered a son before his dramatic conversion to Christianity in 387 AD. He famously prayed 'Grant me chastity, but not yet.' After converting, he embraced celibacy and became Bishop of Hippo. His theology held that original sin corrupted human sexuality, making lust an ever-present danger even in marriage, where sex was legitimate only for procreation. His personal experience of desire directly shaped these rigorous sexual ethics.
The era
Augustine wrote during the late Roman Empire's Christianization (354–430 AD), when the church was establishing sexual ethics amid competing philosophies—Stoic rational self-mastery, Manichean dualism condemning the body, and Roman cultural permissiveness toward sexuality. Early Christian theologians were actively defining what distinguished believers from pagans, making marital conduct a theological battleground. Augustine's insistence that even marital sex carries the taint of lust became foundational Catholic doctrine that shaped Western Christianity for over a millennium.
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