Annotation XXII

”Whoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a bill of divorce.” — Matthew 5:31

On the degrees of consanguinity.

Augustine corrected the exposition he had brought to this passage in the first book On the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, chapter 25, in the first book of the Retractations, chapter 19, thus: “Likewise, what I said — ‘This is to be understood both of father and mother and of the other bonds of blood, that in them we should hate that which the human race has drawn by lot in being born and dying’ — sounds as if these necessities would not exist if, no sin of human nature preceding, no one died: which sense I have already above disapproved. For there would assuredly be thoughts and kinships, even if — no original sin existing — the human race grew and multiplied without death. And therefore the question is otherwise to be resolved — why the Lord commanded that enemies be loved, while elsewhere he commands that even parents and children be held in hatred — not as it is [here] resolved, but as we have often resolved it afterward: that is, that we should love enemies [so as] to win them for the kingdom of God, and hate [them] in [our] kinsfolk if they hinder [us] from the kingdom of God.”