Miłość i pożądliwość cielesna w doktrynie św. Augustyna

Abstract

By taking up the issue of the mutual relationship of love and covetousness, Augustine devotes considerable attention to it in the context of marriage. Love and coveting, understood as disordered love, and simultaneously the consequence of the original sin, constitutes force that drives human life, also in the sphere of marriage and sexuality. Saint Augustine did not reject covetousness completely, but he encouraged people to control it by temperance and to use it properly in marriage, in the spirit of love. The Bishop of Hippo, though he himself praised the temperance and virginity, defended the value of bodily love, especially against the deviations of the heretics. He emphasized the value of marriage and the need to arrange covetousness by submitting it to authentic caritas.