Response to Augustine?

[axolotl]

St. Augustine, De genesi ad litteram, 9, 5-9
“I don’t see what sort of help woman was created to provide man with, if
one excludes the purpose of procreation. If woman was not given to man
for help in bearing children, for what help could she be? To till the
earth together? If help were needed for that, man would have been a
better help for man. The same goes for comfort in solitude. How much
more pleasure is it for life and conversation when two friends live
together than when a man and a woman cohabitate?”

Woman, together with her own husband, is the image of God, so that the
whole substance may be one image, but when she is referred to separately
in her quality as a helpmeet, which regards the woman alone, then she is
not the image of God, but as regards the male alone, he is the image of
God as fully and completely as when the woman too is joined with him in
one. (St. Augustine, De Trinitate 7.7.10 qtd. in Ruether 95)

 

[DavidB]

axolotl:

St. Augustine, De genesi ad litteram, 9, 5-9
“I don’t see what sort of help woman was created to provide man with, if
one excludes the purpose of procreation. If woman was not given to man
for help in bearing children, for what help could she be? To till the
earth together? If help were needed for that, man would have been a
better help for man. The same goes for comfort in solitude. How much
more pleasure is it for life and conversation when two friends live
together than when a man and a woman cohabitate?”

Woman, together with her own husband, is the image of God, so that the
whole substance may be one image, but when she is referred to separately
in her quality as a helpmeet, which regards the woman alone, then she is
not the image of God, but as regards the male alone, he is the image of
God as fully and completely as when the woman too is joined with him in
one. (St. Augustine, De Trinitate 7.7.10 qtd. in Ruether 95)

Again, you’re dealing with highyl flawed, wrong opinions. Augustine needed a good wife to set him straight . . . and so did Origen and Aquinas. Too much denying the fleshly desires distorted their thinking . . . something most men can relate to at one time or another

 

[mike182d]

DavidB:

Again, you’re dealing with highyl flawed, wrong opinions. Augustine needed a good wife to set him straight . . . and so did Origen and Aquinas. Too much denying the fleshly desires distorted their thinking . . . something most men can relate to at one time or another

Actually, with Augustine, it was quite the opposite. He actually had a son. It was accepting too much of the fleshly desires in his earlier life that formed his later outlook.

 

[mike182d]

You have to remember that because of Augustine’s contempt for his former way of life, he had an axe to grind in most of his thinking. Because of this, in 428 Augustine wrote his *Retractions *when he was at a more mature age and found some of his former statements to be imprudent or incorrect.

As you can imagine, many of these retractions dealt with his opinion of human sexuality.