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Christian History Magazine—Issue 67: St. Augustine: Sinner, Bishop, Saint is unavailable, but you can change that!

He was a brilliant theologian whose mind raged over a vast array of issues with incomparable depth and dexterity. He was a regal bishop, an ecclesiastical authority, who refined the teachings of the church. And he was a fallen human being who struggled with common weaknesses: sex, vanity, self-recriminations, anger and depression. Christian History & Biography offers this issue as an informed...

Because of marriage’s sacramental character, Augustine allowed divorce only for adultery and, so long as the former spouse (or, interestingly, the dismissed concubine) lived, he categorically forbade remarriage as a damnable sin. Married second-class Augustine nevertheless viewed sex and marriage as inferior to the celibate life, in contrast to Jovian, a fourth-century monk who taught that marriage and celibacy were equal (and whose views were condemned by Ambrose and Pope Siricius). In On Holy Virginity,