Celibacy
Augustinian view

In the early Church, higher clerics lived in marriages. Augustine taught that the original sin of Adam and Eve was either an act of foolishness (insipientia) followed by pride and disobedience to God, or else inspired by pride. The first couple disobeyed God, who had told them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:17). The tree was a symbol of the order of creation. Self-centeredness made Adam and Eve eat of it, thus failing to acknowledge and respect the world as it was created by God, with its hierarchy of beings and values. They would not have fallen into pride and lack of wisdom, if Satan had not sown into their senses "the root of evil" (radix mali). Their nature was wounded by concupiscence or libido, which affected human intelligence and will, as well as affections and desires, including sexual desire. The sin of Adam is inherited by all human beings. Already in his pre-Pelagian writings, Augustine taught that original sin was transmitted by concupiscence, which he regarded as the passion of both soul and body, making humanity a massa damnata (mass of perdition, condemned crowd) and much enfeebling, though not destroying, the freedom of the will.

In the early 3rd century, the Canons of the Apostolic Constitutions decreed that only lower clerics might still marry after their ordination, but marriage of bishops, priests, and deacons were not allowed.
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