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2. Saint Augustine and "Putting Bad to Good Use"
One of many seminal ideas in Augustine's thought is that "bad can be used to good purpose."[21] God, he points out, makes positive use of those aspects of creation which seem to have gone wrong; we have to learn to do likewise. The idea is repeatedly expressed: "God uses even bad things well"; "God knows how to put not only good things, but also bad things, to good use"; "Almighty God, the Lord of all creatures, who, as it is written, made everything very good, so ordered them that he could make good use both of good things and of bad"; "Just as it is bad to make bad use of what is good, so it is good to make good use of what is bad. When these therefore - good and bad; and good use and bad use - are put together, they make up four differences. Good is used well by whoever vows continence to God, while good is used badly by whoever vows continence to an idol; evil is used badly by whoever indulges concupiscence through adultery, while evil is used well by whoever restricts concupiscence to marriage."[22]
In his writings on marriage, Augustine refers this principle particularly to the presence of concupiscence in conjugal intercourse. Such intercourse is good, but the carnal concupiscence or lust that accompanies it is not. Nevertheless spouses in their intercourse use this evil well,[23] and he wants them to be aware of this. "So let good spouses use the evil of concupiscence well, just as a wise man uses an imprudent servant for good tasks"; "I hold that to use lust is not always a sin, because to use evil well is not a sin"; "as for the warfare experienced by chaste persons, whether celibate or married, we assert that there could have been no such thing in paradise before [Adam's] sin. Marriage is still the same, but in begetting children nothing evil would then have been used; now the evil of concupiscence is used well"; "this evil is used well by faithful spouses."[24]
So, for Augustine lust is an evil. Nevertheless, spouses can nevertheless use it well in their truly conjugal intercourse, whereas unmarried people who yield to lust sin by using this evil badly.[25] It follows, within this logic, that the married person who engages in illicit intercourse uses lust badly and therefore sins. Illicit intercourse obviously comprises adultery, and there is no doubt that in Augustine's thought, it also covers contraception.
Augustine goes further still and proposes an opinion well set to clash directly with modern views on married sexuality. He holds that married intercourse is "excusable" (and wholly conjugal) only when it is carried out for the conscious purpose of having children.[26] If it is engaged in just for the satisfaction of con-cupiscence, it always carries with it some element of fault, at least of a venial type.
In his view, the intention of spouses in intercourse should not be pleasure for its own sake but rather procreation, adding that if in their intercourse the spouses intend more than what is needed for procreation, this evil (malum), which he refuses to consider as proper to marriage itself, remains excusable (veniale) because of the goodness of marriage itself.[27] Elsewhere he puts his view even more clearly: if pleasure-seeking is the main purpose of spouses in their intercourse, they sin - but only venially on account of their Christian marriage.[28]
In support of this view Augustine time and again cites the passage in the seventh chapter of the First Letter to the Corinthians, where St. Paul "allows" Christian spouses to refrain from conjugal intercourse by mutual consent and for a time, but recommends that it not be for too long, "lest Satan tempt you through lack of self-control," adding that this advice of his is given not as a command, but secundum indulgentiam, or, as Augustine translates it, secundum veniam.