EQ 91.2 (2020), 114-132M e m o r i a a n d t h e L u s

EQ 91.2 (2020), 114-132
M e m o r i a a n d t h e L u s t D is e a s e : A n A u g u s t i
n i a n
E n q u i r y i n t o P o s t - C o n v e r s i o n S e x u a l H a b
i t
E rn ie Laskaris
Ernie Laskaris is a recent graduate o f M elbourne School o f
Theology, Melbourne,
Australia.
K e y W o r d s : A u g u s t i n e ; C o n c u p i s c e n c e ; C
o n f e s s io n s ; L u s t; M e m o r y ; S e x ; S e x u a l i t y ;
S in ;
T e m p t a t i o n .
I. Introduction
The prevailing attitude toward sexuality in the twenty-first
century West can be
summarised by the strange (and rather paradoxical) maxim: 'Sex
is everything,
and, at the same time, sex is nothing. '1 On the one hand,
sexuality has come to be
understood as essential to a human being’s personal identity,
and yet, on the other
hand, it has come to be so trivialised— used as a kind of casual
'happiness drug'—
so as to remove all sense of the sacred. 'The combined effect [of

these paradoxical
statements]’, according to Jonathan Grant, is the ‘tendency
toward hypersexuality,
empowering social phenomena that threaten to entrap much of a
generation.’2
As such, the average professing Christian in the West,
especially the teenagers
and the young adults, will find it increasingly difficult, if not
wholly impossible, to
avoid the influence of an awfully sex-saturated culture. One
cannot listen to their
radio without hearing popular songs proudly declaring the
thrills of casual sex, nor
can they walk the streets of the cities without having to behold
images of scantily-
clad bodies. Recent studies have claimed that, despite the vast
majority believing it
to be morally wrong, a large number of self-identified
‘evangelicals’ are having sex
outside of marriage. 3 While the accuracy of these studies has
been challenged, it is
at least demonstrably true that our churches have a significant
issue to address.4
1 Russell D. Moore and Andrew Walker, The Gospel and
Pornography, The Gospel for Life
Series (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2017), 18.
2 Jonathan Grant, Divine Sex: A Compelling Vision fo r
Christian Relationships in a
Hypersexualized Age (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2015), 96
(emphasis added).
3 Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, Premarital Sex in
America: How Young Americans

Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2011), 1; Tyler
Charles, ‘(Almost) Everyone’s Doing It’, Relevant Magazine 53
(2011), 64-69 (65). Indeed,
some as young as fourteen and fifteen from among the
evangelical churches have testified:
T never realised how powerful passion can be.’ Shari, a fifteen
year old girl, quoted in Ron
Luce, Battle Cry fo r My Generation: The Fight to Save Our
Friends (Colorado Springs: Cook
Communications, 2006), 41.
4 See, for example, Kevin DeYoung, Premarital Sex and Our
Love Affair with Bad Stats’, The
Gospel Coalition, 13 December 2011.
M e m o r ia a n d th e L u s t D isease EQ • 115
This article will focus, however, on a particular category of
Christians—namely,
the ones who, prior to their Christian conversion, have a sexual
history (of sexual
acts outside of marriage) stored in their memory. Consider the
testimony of Scott
Farhart and Elizabeth King:
Many of us became Christians after we had already begun our
sexual lives ...
It seems for many of us that, when Paul (Rom. 12:1) says to
present our bod-
ies as living sacrifices, it really means sacrificing a fulfilling
and exciting sex
life. We envy those ‘role models’ on television and movie
screens who seem to

enjoy sex with great abandon. We escape into the fantasy world
of romance
novels, soap operas, or pornographic videos to become
spectators of a life we
may never enjoy as Christians. This is especially difficult for
those of us who
carry memories o f a pre-conversion sexual life?
Much has already been written about this category in terms of
an existential strug-
gle to 'fit in,’ so to speak, among other Christians. Wes
Markofski, for example,
speaks of a girl, pseudonymously named Elle, who professes to
have converted to
Christianity in high school, but was alienated from campus
evangelical groups dur-
ing her undergraduate studies due to her 'pre-conversion sexual
life’. She testifies,
...the first time that I went to Campus Crusade for Christ, they
played this
game called I Never. There were hundreds of freshman kids at
this meeting.
Someone would say, "Run around the circle if you’ve gotten a
tattoo," and
because I'd gotten a tattoo, I’d run around the circle. So... this
one girl yells,
"I've never had sex!’’ So I take off running, and I’m the only
one running, out of
hundreds of kids! And I was like... "I don’t belong here. What
am I doing here?
I miss my stoner friends.”5 6
One could certainly argue that 1 Never is a terrible game to play
with campus evan-
gelicals, but nonetheless, Elle ended up forsaking her church

altogether and be-
coming involved with a small communitarian movement
(namely, the Urban Mon-
astery). It is indeed cases like these that prompted Veronica
Zundel to say in 1990,
‘What sense does it make... to laud virginity to the new convert
who has already
got through several sexual partners?’7 The question this article
will address, how-
ever, relates to the apparent religious connection between post-
conversion sexual
temptation and memories of a pre-conversion sexual life.
Precisely what role do the
memories of past sexual activity play in the experience of post-
conversion sexual
temptation? In search of a philosophically and theologically
rigorous answer, this
article will investigate Augustine’s philosophical treatment of
memoria (‘memory’)
and morbo concupiscentiae (‘the lust disease’) in his
Confessions, with the objective
of providing a framework for Christians dwelling in the
hypersexualised West to
address the incessant reality of sexual temptation.
5 Scott A. Farhart and Elizabeth King, 'Sacred Sex’, in The
Christian Woman's Complete Guide
to Health (Lake Mary: Sloam, 2008), 122-32 (126, emphasis
added).
6 Wes Markofski, New Monasticism and the Transformation o f
American Evangelicalism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 175.
7 Veronica Zundel, ‘Carbon Dating’, Third Way 13/1 (1990),
16-18 (17).

116 • EQ Ernie Laskaris
II. Puddly concupiscence of the flesh
Augustine's Confessions is a unique blend of the theological,
and the philosophical,
and the personal, addressing a broad range of cross-discipline
subjects [from the
problem of evil, to the nature of time itself). One of the most im
portant of these,
however, is the theme of sexual desire—his comments on which
have sparked a
wide range of scholarly opinion. For some, such as Uta Ranke-
Heinemann, Au-
gustine’s treatm ent of the doctrine of ‘Original Sin’ made him
‘the man who fused
Christianity together with a hatred of sex and pleasure',
supposedly ruining sex for
the Western world.8 And yet, for others, considering the focus
given to 'the elusive
lure of endless pleasures ever longed for and never quite
reached, his Confessions
is an irreducibly erotic text'.9 There is certainly a significant
degree of truth here.
In her analysis of the book's rhetorical features, Margaret Miles
concludes that Au-
gustine, by means o f‘partial disclosures, vivid sensual
metaphors, [and] tantalising
gaps', possessed a ‘remarkable skill in engaging readers’ erotic
curiosity, only to
refuse to satisfy it’.10 In any case, James O'Donnell’s
assessment, th at those who
have ‘the slightest possible familiarity with Augustine’s name
often think of him

obscurely as a paragon of promiscuity’, is right on target.* 11
Of course, Augustine's own morally suspect sexual history and
struggle with
sexual desire is well documented. In Book Two of the
Confessions, he focuses on his
sixteenth year; a year in which he had 'dared to grow wild in a
succession of various
and shadowy loves’ [C onf 2.1.1).12 It is here that Augustine
would come clean, so to
speak, about his youthful lusts. He writes [Conf. 2.2.2),
But w hat was it th at delighted me except that to love and to be
loved? Still...
the mists of passion steamed up out of the puddly concupiscence
of the flesh,
and the hot imagination of puberty, and they did so obscure and
overcast my
heart th at I was unable to distinguish pure affection from
unholy desire. Both
boiled confusedly within me, and dragged my unstable youth
down over the
cliffs of unchaste desires, and plunged me into a gulf of
infamy.13
The technical term ‘concupiscence’ [concupiscentia, a late
Latin term), central to
Augustine’s theological anthropology, merits elucidation. It is
first used in the
works of Tertullian, who asserted th at all sins are the direct
result of concupiscentia
saeculi ('worldly concupiscence’), where concupiscentia is
tantam ount to a vitiosa
8 Uta Ranke-Heinemann, Eunuchs fo r the Kingdom o f God:
Women, Sexuality, and the Catholic

Church, trans. by Peter Heinegg (New York: Doubleday, 1990),
75-76.
9 V. Burrus, M. D. Jordan, and K. Mackendrick, Seducing
Augustine: Bodies, Desires, Confessions
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 2.
10 Margaret Miles, 'The Erotic Text: Augustine’s Confessions’,
Continuum 2/1 (1992), 132-49
(132).
11 James J. O'Donnell, Augustine: A New Biography (New
York: Harper Collins, 2005), 38.
12 Augustine, 'The Confessions of Saint Augustine’, in
Augustine: Confessions and Enchiridion,
ed. and trans. by A. C. Outler, The Library of Christian
Classics, 7 (London: SCM Press,
1955), 50.
13 Ibid., 50-51.
Memoria and the Lust Disease EQ • 117
animi passio (‘corrupted desire of the soul’).14 For Augustine,
this ‘corrupted desire’
was the direct result of the fall—or, more precisely, the direct
result of the postlap-
sarian withdrawal of God’s grace. Augustine scholar Peter
Burnell explains it as the
foundational 'nucleus [of the] anti-divine disposition of the soul
... a comprehen-
sively ruinous "disharmony” at the core of the person',
permeating the entire hu-

man being (a la the later Reformed doctrine o f ‘total
depravity').15 The underlying
‘force’, so to speak, th at manifests this depravity in one’s
perceivable life—whether
in thought or in deed—is consuetudo (‘habit’). Augustine
writes, 'For the law of sin
is the tyranny of habit, by which the mind is drawn and held,
even against its own
will, but still deservedly so, for it so willingly falls into the
habit’ (Conf. 8.5.12).16
As the late Hannah Arendt puts it, ‘The inclination to sin
springs more from habit
than from passion itself, because the world man has founded in
concupiscentia is
consolidated in consuetudo.’17
Now, the above is primarily concerned with those who, having
been born ‘dead’
in sin (Eph. 2:1), remain ‘dead’ in sin—i.e. the unconverted,
who are wholly con-
cupiscent. Augustine describes the existential experience of this
as he opens Book
Three (Con/ 3.1.1):
I came to Carthage, where a cauldron offlagitiosorum amorum
(unholy loves)
was seething and bubbling all around me. I was not in love as
yet, but I was
in love with love ... Because of this, my soul was unhealthy;
and, full of sores,
it exuded itself forth, itching to be scratched by scraping on the
things of the
senses ... To love and to be loved was sweet to me, and all the
more when I
gained the enjoyment of the body of the person I loved. Thus I
polluted the

spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence, and I
dimmed its luster
with the slime of lust.13
The meaning of the imagery here is clear. An 'itch' does not
cause disease; an ‘itch’
is the symptom of disease. In this case, the ‘itch’ to be
'scratched by scraping on
the things of the senses’, here referring to the satisfying of his
sexual desires, is
the symptom of something that he would later call morbo
concupiscentiae, typically
translated as ‘the lust disease’.19 For Augustine, such a
'disease' was persistently in-
trusive, in the sense th at it metastasises, so to speak, to all
things—even ‘the spring
of [platonic] friendship’.20 Like a tyrannical dictator, lust
spreads its influence across
every sphere under its control, and thus, Augustine deems it
appropriate to refer
to himself as Libinis Servus (‘a slave of lust’), 'in bondage to a
lasting habit’ (Conf.
14 Timo Nisula, Augustine and the Functions of Concupiscence,
Supplements to Vigiliae
Christianae, 116 (Boston: Brill, 2012), 28-30.
15 Peter f. Burnell, ‘Concupiscence’, in Augustine through the
Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. by
Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans,
1999), 224-27 (224).
16 Augustine, ‘Confessions’, 165.
17 Hannah Arendt, Love and Saint Augustine, ed. by Joanna V.
Scott and Judith C. Stark

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 83.
18 Augustine, 'Confessions’, 61.
19 See Conf. 8.7.17, in ibid., 169.
20 Margaret Miles, Augustine and the Fundamentalist's
Daughter (Eugene: Cascade, 2011), 77.
6.15.25; cf. John 8:34; Rom. 6:20).21 What, then, of the
Christian convert? Does ‘the
lust disease’ continue to pollute the one who is no longer ‘dead’
in their sin (Eph.
2:4-5)?
In order to answer this question, we ought to briefly consider
Augustine’s con-
version. Comparing the process of conversion to the process of
giving birth, Au-
gustine understood his own conversion as the climactic point to
a lengthy period
of painful gestation, especially for his mother, who ‘suffered
greater pains in [his]
spiritual pregnancy than when she bore [him] in the flesh’
[Conf. 5.9.16).22 The nar-
rative of Augustine’s conversion to Christianity, found in Book
Eight of the Confes-
sions, is not w ritten as a story of sudden regeneration [in the
style of the apos-
tle Paul's conversion in Damascus), but as a story th at
presupposes an incessant,
unabating obstacle that stood between Augustine and religious
faith—and that
obstacle was incontinence.23 As Gerald Schlabach puts it,
‘Becoming continent and

being converted to Christian faith ... were for Augustine
inseparable’, and the ‘un
willingness to abandon sexual pleasures was Augustine’s last
and most intractable
impediment’ to true and devout religious faith.24 This
particular unwillingness is
plainly dem onstrated throughout the Confessions, but for the
purposes of this arti-
cle, a few examples will suffice, beginning with Book Seven.
Therein, one reads of
Augustine’s disenchantment toward Manicheism and rejection
of astrology [both
of which involved w hat he called phantasmata, ‘fantasms’),
leading him to study
Neoplatonist cosmology, but only to discern within it an
idolatrous perversion of
Judeo-Christian cosmology.25 Here, it could be said th at
Augustine had successfully
hopped over the intellectual hurdle between him and Christian
conversion. There
was, however, a more onerous obstruction th at Augustine
would now have to ad-
dress [Conf 7.17.23):
And I marvelled th at 1 now loved thee, and no fantasm in thy
stead, and yet I
was not stable enough to enjoy my God steadily. Instead 1 was
transported to
thee by thy beauty; then presently torn away from thee by my
own pondere
(weight), sinking with grief into these lower things. This pondus
(weight) was
carnal h a b it... 1 was not ready to cleave to thee firmly. For
the body, being
corrupted, pressed down the soul, and the earthly dwelling
weighs down the

mind, which muses upon many things.26
In other words, his intellectual ‘ascent’ (to use the language of
the Neoplatonists) to
God was being hindered by the ‘weight’ of something at the
bottom of this ladder,
22 Ibid., 106; cf. Martha Ellen Stortz, 'Where or When Was
Your Servant Innocent? Augustine
on Childhood', in The Child in Christian Thought, ed. by Marcia
J. Bunge (Grand Rapids:
William B. Eerdmans, 2001), 78-102 (87).
23 Henry Chadwick, Augustine: A Very Short Introduction
(Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1986), 27-28.
24 Gerald W. Schlabach, 'Continence', in Fitzgerald [ed.),
Augustine through the Ages, 235-36.
25 Augustine: Confessions, Books V-IX, ed. by Peter White,
Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 195.
26 Augustine, ‘Confessions’, 150-51.
M em oria a n d th e Lust Disease EQ • 119
so to speak, which was none other than concupiscentia
manifested as consuetudo
carnalis (‘carnal habit’).27
Book Eight, then, functions as Augustine’s account of his battle

with this 'carnal
habit'. He confesses that, even though many of his former
passions and desires (e.g.
the lust for power) had ceased to excite him as they once did, he
remained tenac-
ite r alligabar ex fe m in a , ‘tightly bound to woman' (C onf
8.1.2).28 Even though he
was longing to devote his life wholly to Christ as a celibate
Christian, he remained
bound to the 'puddly concupiscence of the flesh’; that tyrant
ruling over his will.29
In his own words [Conf. 8.5.10-11), ‘I was bound by the iron
chain of my own will
... For out of the perverse will came lust, and the service of lus t
ended in consuetudo
(habit), and consuetudo, not resisted, became necessity.’30 Due
to this ‘necessity’,
he would go on to say th at he ‘was as much afraid of being
freed from all entangle-
ments as we ought to fear to be entangled’.31 Augustine finds
support for his ideas
here in Paul’s epistle to the Romans, wherein Paul is most
explicit regarding the
w ar between two opposing ‘laws’ within every person—the
‘law of [his] mind’ and
the 'law of sin' (Rom. 7:22-23). Of course, th at such a war
existed within Augus-
tine is evident from his prayer for a delayed subjugation of his
sexual desires [Conf.
8.7.17).
But, wretched youth th at I was—supremely wretched even in
the very outset
of my youth—I had entreated chastity of thee, and 1 had prayed,
'Grant me
chastity and continence, but not yet.’ For I was afraid, lest thou

shouldst hear
me too soon, and too soon cure me of my lust disease, which I
desired to have
satisfied, rather than extinguished.32
It is also worth noting his poetic description of the internal
battle between his ‘two
wills’ as two opposing voices.33 The first was the memory of
his past sexual part-
ners [Conf. 8.11.26).
It was my old mistresses—trifles of trifles and vanities of
vanities—who still
enthralled me. They would tug at my fleshly garments and
softly whisper:
‘Are you going to p art with us? And from th at moment will we
never be with
you anymore? And from th at moment will not this and th at be
forbidden you
forever?'34
The second voice, however, is continence, who ‘arrives on the
scene in all of her
allegorical splendour just before Augustine is completely a t his
w it’s end’.35 She ap-
27 Brian Dobell .Augustine's Intellectual Conversion: The
Journey from Platonism to Christianity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 197.
29 Nisula, Augustine and the Functions o f Concupiscence, 287.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid., 169.
33 P. Rigby, The Theology o f Augustine’s Confessions

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2015), 62.
35 James Wetzel, Augustine: A Guide fo r the Perplexed
(London: Continuum, 2010), 101.
120 • EQ E r n i e L a s k a r is
pears to him as one who is ‘chastely dignified’, but Virtuously
alluring’—a woman
whose beauty he was not able to have in his ‘usual way’.36 She
beckoned him with
a smile, pointing to those who, in the strength provided to them
by God, embraced
the call to continence (Conf. 8.11.27): ‘Can you not do w hat all
these young men and
maidens can?’37 Still, he hesitates.
And I blushed violently, for I still heard the muttering of those
trifles and
hung suspended. Again, she seemed to speak, 'Stop your ears
against those
unclean members of yours, that they might be mortified. For
they tell you of
delights, but not according to the law of the Lord thy God.’ This
struggle—rag-
ing in my heart—was nothing but the contest of self against
self.38
Finally, however, upon hearing the mysterious voice of a child
calling out to him to
open the Bible, he reads the text of Rom. 13:14—'But put on the
Lord Jesus Christ,

and make no provision for the flesh to gratify the lusts
thereof’—and immediately,
‘there was infused into [his] heart something like the light of
full certainty, and all
the gloom of doubt vanished away’ (Conf. 8.12.29).39
Augustine was converted, and
now, he testified to a new relation to concupiscence: 'Now was
my soul free from
... wallowing in the mire and scratching the itch of lust. And 1
prattled like a child
to thee, 0 Lord my God—my light, my riches, and my salvation'
(Conf. 9.1.1).40 As
such, the voice of continence prevailed against the voice of his
past sexual partners
calling out to him from his memory. Moving forward, Augustine
committed him-
self to an ‘ascetic’ form of Christianity, no longer desiring
‘wife, children, wealth,
or worldly honours'.41 As James Wetzel notes, however, while
the newly converted
Augustine had, at least for the time being, ‘stopped listening to
old habit, he [had]
yet to realise just how weak the resolve is th at comes from
that’.42
III. Into the spacious halls of memory
Now, for Augustine, it would appear th at the ascetic
renunciation o f ‘sex' in all of
its forms was somewhat of a self-imposed condition for his own
conversion, and
thus, it is perhaps reasonable to suggest, as Elizabeth Clark
does, th at Augustine
considered his conversion to be ‘as much to continence as it was
to Christianity’.43
Of course, he indeed managed to pass through the rest of his
life, from the point of

his conversion, in strict sexual abstinence, but this in itself does
not say much about
the issue of sexual temptation.44 That is, to assess Augustine’s
post-conversion sex-
36 Schlabach, ‘Continence’, 236.
37 Augustine, ‘Confessions', 175.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid., 176.
40 Ibid., 179.
41 Possidius, quoted in Elizabeth A. Clark, ‘Asceticism’, in
Fitzgerald (ed.), Augustine through
the Ages, 67-71 (68).
42 Wetzel .Augustine, 101.
43 Clark, Asceticism', 68.
44 J. A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval
Europe (Chicago: University of
M e m o ria a n d th e Lust Disease EQ • 121
ual purity solely on w hether or not he engaged in sex acts is
somewhat rudim en-
tary, for what would ensue from his commitment to sexual
abstinence was a ‘long
stretch of years of disappointment, alienation, and tem ptation’,
things which ‘he did
not and could not yet see in those [early post-conversion]
days’.45
Book Ten of the Confessions marks the end of the
autobiographical section, and
the beginning of a section of self-analysis. Speaking to God, he
asks, 'I have seen and

spoken of my harvest of things past (i.e. his former sins], b ut w
hat am I now, at this
very moment of making my confessions?’ (Conf. 10.3.4),46 He
then speculates how
he will be received by his future readers, and in so doing,
reveals part of the answer
to what he is now, at the very moment of writing (Con/ 10.4.5]:
'Will they wish me
happiness when they learn how near I have approached thee by
thy gifts? And will
they pray for me when they learn how much I am still kept back
by my own pon-
dere [weight]?’47 Now, if this 'weight", which is ‘carnal habit’,
still manifested itself
in Augustine’s post-conversion life, and if 'carnal habit' is the
manifestation of ‘the
puddly concupiscence of the flesh’, then it follows that the
Christian convert, while
delivered from the guilt of Original Sin, remains concupiscent
to some extent (con-
tra the theological anthropology of the Pelagians], Burnell puts
it this way,
Because of residual concupiscence, moral perfection is
impossible for a human
being in this world ... concupiscence is steadily diminished
(though only by
grace] in the [converts] who make spiritual progress, b u t ... is
not abolished
until the saved are established in a state of perfection at the end
of time.48
Indeed, Augustine would say this much himself in one of his
treatises against the
Pelagians: 'Still concupiscence remains, although its guilt is
now taken away; and

remain it will, until our entire infirmity be healed by the
renewal of our inner
man advancing day by day, when at last our outward man shall
be clothed with
incorruption.’49 Later, in his Enchiridion, his understanding
developed further along
the lines of the eighth chapter of Romans:
[Christians], as long as they live this mortal life, are in conflict
with death ...
even as they are being led by the Spirit of God (Rom. 8 :14-
17]... they are also
being led by their own spirits, so that, weighed down by the
corruptible body,
and influenced by certain human feelings, they fall a w a y ...
and commit sin.50
Until the last day, then, concupiscence will continue to exist in
the Christian, b ut no
longer in the same manner. Prior to conversion, concupiscence
reigns in the body
(cf. Rom. 6:12], but the ‘converted’—i.e. the one who now
'wishes not to lust, but
still lusts’—is delivered from the tyranny of concupiscence
through the divine work
Chicago Press, 1987), 100.
45 O’Donnell, A New Biography, 76.
47 Ibid.
48 Burnell, ‘Concupiscence’, 225.
49 Augustine, ‘On Marriage and Concupiscence’, in The Anti-
Pelagian Works o f St. Augustine,
ed. by Marcus Dods, 3 vols (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1872-
1876), II, 126.

50 Augustine, ‘Enchiridion’, in Confessions and Enchiridion, " i
l l .
of regeneration.51 That is, while sexual concupiscence is
inseparable from fallen
sexuality, the ‘converted’ one is now, only by divine
enablement, able to refuse to
give consent to its allurement.
The problem, however, is that, as Paul says, T do not do what I
want, but 1 do
the very thing I hate' (Rom. 7:15).52 Here, Paul confesses to
doing the evil th at he
hates without giving his consent to it—the action itself being
rooted in the m o w
concupiscendi (impulse of concupiscence].53 ‘We sin',
Augustine interprets, 'not by
having this perverse desire, but by consenting to it.'54 He
illustrates with the exam-
ple of one who experiences sexual desire upon seeing the wife
of another man, and
in response to the temptation within, he says to himself, ‘I w
on't do it. Granted, it
would be delightful, but 1 won’t do it.'55 In light of this reality
of residual m o w con-
cupiscendi, Augustine admits the deficiencies in his own
capacity to resist sexual
temptation.56 Consider his prayer below (Conf. 10.4.5; 10.5.7),
And, 0 Lord ... have mercy upon me, according to thy great
mercy, for thy
name’s sake. And do not—on any account whatsoever—abandon

what thou
hast begun in me. Go on, rather, to complete what is yet
imperfect in me ...
[for] I know th at thou cannot suffer any violence, but I myself
do not know
w hat tem ptations I can resist, or to which I will succumb.57
What is dem onstrated in Book Ten, then, is a post-conversion
division within the
Christian self. As Wetzel puts it, Augustine’s 'feelings of self-
division suggest th at he
wears his carnal desires close to his heart. They do not fade
away ... instead, they
bide their time, and wait, like so many hungry stowaways, to
plead exigency.'58 In
his Soliloquies, this Augustine qua the divided Christian self is
put on full display.
Consider the following dialogue between Augustine and Reason
(i.e. his own ra-
tional thoughts), wherein Reason says [Sol. 1.14.25),
Do you not observe how, only yesterday, we announced, as if
secure, that we
were no longer hindered by any fleshly plague, and that we
loved wisdom
alone, and th at we sought for and desired other things on her
account only?
51 Augustine, 'On Man's Perfection in Righteousness', in Dods
(ed.), The Anti-Pelagian Works
o f St. Augustine, 1, 336; cf. Rom. 7:16.
52 There is, of course, debate as to w hether or not Paul is
speaking of himself prior to or
following his conversion here. In fact, Augustine himself
changed his mind on the

issue, initially believing Paul to have been speaking of his life
prior to conversion. For
more on Augustine’s interpretation of this text, see Patout
Burns, 'Augustine’s Changed
Interpretation of Romans 7 and His Doctrine of Inherited Sin’,
in Augustine on Heart and
Life: Essays in Memory o f William Harmless, S.J., ed. by J. J.
O'Keefe and M. Cameron, Journal
of Religion and Society Supplement Series, 15 (Omaha: Kripke
Center, 2018), 104-27.
53 Han-Luen Komline, Augustine on the Will: A Theological
Account, Oxford Studies in
Historical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019),
162.
54 Augustine, On Romans, trans. by Paula F. Landes (Chico:
Scholars Press, 1982), 7.
55 Augustine, Sermons, ed. by John E. Rostelle, trans. by
Edmund Hill, 11 vols (New Rochelle:
New City Press, 1990-1997), V (1992), 75.
56 Komline, Augustine on the Will, 163.
57 Augustine, 'Confessions’, 204-05; cf. Phil. 1:6.
58 Wetzel, Augustine, 82.
M e m o ria a n d th e Lust Disease EQ • 123
How worthless, how foul, how execrable, how horrible, seemed
to you the
embrace of a woman, as we were inquiring between ourselves
concerning
the desire for a wife! And yet, th at veiy night, being wakeful,
when we again

discussed this matter, how far other you felt than you would
have supposed,
when thrilled with these imagined blandishments and th at
amorous soft-
ness! [...] May th at most confidential physician of yours
therefore demon-
strate to you both w hat you have escaped by his care, and what
y e t remains
to be cured.59
Augustine replies in despair, ‘Silence, I beseech you, silence!
Why do you so to r-
ment me? Why do you probe so deep? Now I weep beyond
endurance! Henceforth
I promise nothing, I presume nothing, lest you ask again
concerning these things’
(Sol. 1.14.26).60 Of course, for the purposes of this article, it is
interesting to note
th at Reason appeals only to that with which the post-
conversion Augustine had
pre-conversion experience. It is to this particular relation
between the sins of youth
and present temptation th at we now turn our attention.
For the most part, the content of the Confessions is produced
solely by Augus-
tine’s memory. Indeed, the entire book can be described as his
'memoirs’, so to
speak—a historical account of his life up to the very moment of
writing. One of the
most pressing of all of his memories, however, was th at of an
ex-lover. Indeed, he
speaks much of her, but never so much as to speak her name—
referring to her only
as una, 'the only one’ (Conf. 4.2.2); or as ‘the one with whom I
was used to sleeping’

(iConf. 6.15.25).61 Most Augustine scholars consider her to
have either been a slave
or a lower-class freed woman, and since Roman law forbade
marriage between cer-
tain classes, it is suggested th at ‘concubinage’ was the only
option.62 Some, howev-
er, prefer to maintain the ‘teasing elusiveness of Augustine's
Latin’, which gives the
reader no labels with which to assign their mysterious
relationship—'He does not
call her m istress or concubine any more than he calls her wife;
rather, he manages
not to call her anything.’63 Either way, it is certain that, once
his m other had chosen
out a bride for her son, Augustine’s una—having been with him
thirteen years, and
even having had a child with him—was only an ‘impediment’ th
at required prom pt
removal (Conf. 6.15.25):
Meanwhile, my sins were being multiplied. The one with whom
I was used
59 Augustine, ‘The Soliloquies’, in Augustine: Earlier Writings,
ed. and trans. by John H. S.
Burleigh, The Library of Christian Classics, 6 (London: SCM
Press, 1953), 43-44 (emphasis
added).
60 Ibid., 44.
61 Augustine, 'Confessions’, 77,132; cf. E. Ann Matter,
‘Women’, in Fitzgerald (ed.), Augustine
through the Ages, 887-92 (889).
62 Kim Power, 'Concubine, Concubinage’, in ibid., 222-23
(222).

63 Burrus, Jordan, and Mackendrick, Seducing Augustine, 19. It
has been argued that
Augustine's avoidance in using the word concubina was an
attempt to maintain the
ambiguity of the relationship, blurring the distinction between
marriage and concubinage.
For more on this, see Danuta Shanzer, ‘Avulsa a Latere Meo:
Augustine’s Spare Rib—
Augustine's Confessions 6.15.25 'Journal o f Roman Studies 92
(2002), 157-76.
1 2 4 • EQ Ernie Laskaris
to sleeping was torn from my latere (side) as an impediment to
my marriage,
and my heart which ad h a ereb a t (cleaved) to her was torn and
wounded until
it bled. She w ent back to Africa, vowing to thee never to know
another man,
and leaving with me my natural son by her.64
Augustine's choice of language here reveals that he viewed his
separation as a ‘re
versal’, so to speak, of Gen. 2:21-24, wherein God, having
created Eve from Adam’s
latere, defines marriage: ‘A man shall leave his father and
mother, and he shall ad-
herebit to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.'65 By
using this terminology, he
invites the reader to consider his grief at the loss of his una in
absolute contrast to
Adam’s joy and pleasure at the creation of Eve, as if to say,
'God has cut away from

me the flesh of my flesh' (contra Gen. 2:23).
Now, this section of the Confessions is relevant to the present
study for two rea-
sons, with the first being Augustine's immediate response to
being torn away from
his una. The girl whom his mother chose for him was two years
too young for m ar-
riage, and Augustine ‘could not bear the delay of the two
years’.66 As such, he would
prove himself to be ‘more faithful to the bed than to the
woman’, finding himself
another m istress to fill this void in his life.67 His own
explanation was th at he was in
‘bondage’ to a perd u ra n tis consuetudinis, a 'lasting habit’, th
at only became increas-
ingly dangerous over time. It is the fourth of w hat Augustine
spoke of as four stages
of sexual sin—(1) concupiscence, (2) consent, (3) action, and
(4) habit.68 Once this
fourth stage is reached, that which is now a sexual habit
becomes a ‘necessity’ (cf.
Conf. 8.5.10, cited above), for as soon as 'the deadly sweetness
and pleasure of the
action has taken hold of the soul, the soul becomes so entangled
in th at habit of its
own making that it cannot conquer what it fashioned for itself
by sinning’.69
A second reason, however, is th at Augustine’s submitting of
himself to a p er-
d u ra n tis consuetudi nis—indeed, anyone's submitting of
themselves to a perdurantis
consuetudinis—is predicated upon the ‘memory’ of the first
three stages. It is at this
point, then, th at we must begin to traverse into the segments of

Book Ten in which
Augustine explores the mystery of m em oria. Introducing this
mystery, he writes
(Conf. 10.8.12; 10.8.14-15),
1 will soar, then, beyond this power of my nature also, still
rising by degrees
toward him who made me. And I enter the fields and into the
spacious halls of
memory, where are stored as treasures the countless images that
have been
brought into them from every m anner of things by the senses.
There, in the
65 As noted by Virginia Burrus, The Sex Lives o f the Saints:
An Erotics o f Ancient Hagiography
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 84.
67 Burrus, Jordan, and Mackendrick, Seducing Augustine, 22.
68 Allan D. Fitzgerald, ‘Habit (Consuetudo)’, in Fitzgerald
(ed.), Augustine through the Ages,
409-11 (409).
69 Augustine, quoted in Bart Van Egmond, Augustine's Early
Thought on the Redemptive
Function o f Divine Judgment, Oxford Early Christian Studies
(Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2018), 120; cf. Komline, Augustine on the Will, 85.

memory, is ... [all] that has been entrusted to it and stored in it,
which oblivi-
on has not yet swallowed up and buried ... All this, I do within
myself, in that
huge hall of my memory ... Great is the power of memory,
exceedingly great,
0 my God; a large and boundless inner hall! Who has plumbed
the depths of
it?70
For Augustine, memoria is clearly much more than the simple
recollection of in-
formation. Memoria, rather, contains with it, and preserves
within it, ‘the histori
cal experience of the soul's single historical existence’.71
Included, therefore, is the
imago Dei, the image of God, and thus, it is reasonable for
Augustine to search for
God in memoria, for memoria retains the imago Dei—albeit
hidden deep within.72
As he searched therein for God, he discovered the 'unlimited
capacity’ of memory
(Conf. 10.9.16], able to store one’s sensory experience of the
created order (Conf.
10.8.15]; abstract concepts learned in the sciences (Conf.
10.9.16]; and even the
marks of emotion—‘For without being joyous now, I can rem
em ber that 1 was once
joyous, and without being sad, I can recall my past sadness'
[Conf. 10.14.21].73 Au-
gustine also recognises, however, that God himself dwells in
memory, but exactly
where in memory? Hence, his questions, ‘What sort of lodging
hast thou made
for thyself there? What kind of sanctuary hast thou built for
thyself?’74 But then,

once his wall of corporeality has collapsed to the ground, he
finds an answer [Conf.
10.26.37-10.27.38].
Where, then, did I find you so as to be able to learn of you—
save in yourself
beyond me. Place, there is none. We go backward and forward,
and there is
no place. Everywhere and at once ... Belatedly I have loved you,
0 Beauty so
ancient and so new, belatedly I have loved you. See, you were
within and I
was without, and I sought you out there. Unlovely, I rushed
wildly among the
lovely things you have made. You were with me, but I was not
with you.75
These sentim ents would be a fitting conclusion to the
Confessions—but then, seem-
ingly out of the blue, he laments: ‘Woe is me! Lord, have pity
on me; my evil sor-
rows contend with my good joys, and on which side the victory
lies I do not know
... You are the Physician, I am the sick man; you are merciful, I
need mercy’ [Conf.
10.28.39].76 As O'Donnell puts it, if the Confessions ‘were
merely the story of Augus-
tine’s ascent to God, the work could well end with 10.27.38’.77
That it does not, how-
ever, is indicative of the fact that, despite clear progress being
made, there remains
something that still needed to be addressed—and th at
something was none other
70 Augustine, 'Confessions’, 208-10.
71 Wayne Hankey, ‘Mind’, in Fitzgerald (ed.), Augustine

through the Ages, 563-67 (566].
72 Rigby, The Theology of Augustine's Confessions, 116.
74 Ibid., 223.
75 Ibid., 224.
76 Ibid., 225.
77 James O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, 3 vols (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1992],
III, 150.
126 • EQ E rn ie Laskaris
than the ‘wounds of concupiscence'.78
The next major division of Book Ten [Conf. 10.30.41-10.39.64j
explores these
‘wounds’ in accordance with the structure of 1 John 2:16, ‘For
all th at is in the
world—concupiscentia carnis (the lusts of the flesh), and
concupiscentia oculorum
(the lusts of the eyes), and a m bitione saeculi (the pride of
life)—is not from the Fa-
ther, but is from the world.’79 With his ensuing discussion on
these three concupis-
cences, Augustine 'catalogues with unsettling precision all the
ways th at the world
[still] seduces him’, effectively providing a detailed summary of
his post-conversion
struggle with sin, still very much in need of divine aid.80 He
begins by expressing his
success in hitherto observing the divine imperative unto
complete abstinence from
fornication, and yet, this is partially undone almost

immediately, for he confesses,
‘There still exist in my memory ... the images of such things as
my [sexual] habits
had fixed there' (C onf 10.30.41).81 Not only would the lustful
memories of these im-
ages cause him trouble during his waking hours, but even during
his sleep, invading
his mind without consent 'not only so as to give pleasure, but
even to obtain consent
and w hat very closely resembles the deed itself. Indeed, the
illusion of the image
prevails to such an extent [that it] persuades [him] when
sleeping to what the real-
ity cannot do when awake.’82 Thus, Augustine, in a mom ent of
despair, prays that
his soul would be ‘wrenched free from concupiscentiae visco
expedita (the sticky
glue of lust)’, in order that, even in dreams, he might 'neither
commit nor consentto
debasing corruptions which come through sensual images, and
which result in the
pollution of the flesh’ (C onf 10.30.42).83
We may conclude here that, according to Augustine, memories
of past sins may
trigger present and future sins. That is, the historical ‘carrying
out’ or ‘performing’
of the sin—from the consent given to concupiscence, to the
wilfully repeated action
th at then becomes ‘habit’—is stored in m em oria, and at any
given moment or situ-
ation (especially those th at are similar to the one in which the
sin was initially car-
ried out), th at memory presents itself, functioning as the m o
tiva tin g fo r c e behind
the temptation to repeat the act.84 To once again yield to this

temptation, then, is
to further strengthen the ‘fixation’ of the lustful images in the
mind. Or, in Augus-
tine’s own words, ‘Such [carnal] delight strongly "fixes" in
memory what it brings
from the slippery senses.’85 Therefore, the one with their
'spacious halls of memory’
78 Pamela Bright, ‘Book Ten: The Self Seeking God Who
Creates and Heals’, in A Reader's
Companion to Augustine’s Confessions, ed. by Kim Paffenroth
and Robert P. Kennedy
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 155-66 (162).
79 The Latin here is the text of the Latin Vulgate.
80 Burrus, Jordan, and Mackendrick, Seducing Augustine, 92;
cf. Schlabach, ‘Continence’,
236. See also John M. Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought
Baptized (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1994), 102,140,188.
82 Ibid.
83 Ibid.
84 Egmond, Augustine's Early Thought on the Redemptive
Function o f Divine judgment, 82.
85 Augustine, ‘De Musica VI (391)', in Musical Aesthetics: A
Historical Reader, ed. by Edward
A. Lippman, Aesthetics in Music, 4, 2 vols (New York:
Pendragon Press, 1986-1988), 1
M em oria an d the Lust Disease EQ • 127

filled with images formed by past sexual habits is constantly
going to be at w ar with
dispositions th at they once willingly formed in themselves.
IV. My weight is my love
What, then, is a believer to do—or, rather, w hat can a believer
do—in light of this re-
sidual concupiscence? As seen above, the guilt of
concupiscence is cleansed through
regeneration. Therefore, those Christians who have filled their
memory with im-
ages of a pre-conversion sexual life can rest assured in God’s
forgiveness of their
sins. Regeneration, however, does not (typically] wash away
those memories. That
is, the images cannot be erased—hence the continual experience
of erotic dreams,
lustful impulses, and the like in Augustine’s post-conversion
life (Conf. 10.30.41],
even as the consecrated bishop of Hippo Regius in Northern
Africa.86 As Carl Vaught
put it, 'Intellectual and volitional transform ations do n o t
cancel suppressed physi-
ological needs, and the images of past sexual acts persist in
[the] memory with
lasting consequences.’87 In sleep, these consequences are
experienced seemingly
w ithout restraint, for his capacity to reason appears to fall
asleep along with him.
When awake, on the other hand, they are not made manifest
alone, but along with
another complexity—namely, the curiositas (‘curiosity’] for the
novel, or the unu-
sual; what Augustine would call the ‘striving for new
experiences through the flesh’,

and a ‘passion for experimenting and knowledge’ (C onf
10.35.54-55].88 Of course,
by this definition, ‘curiosity’ would not qualify as a ‘vice’, but
since it constitutes ‘an
excessive [and] unregulated’ appetite for things th at derive
from the ‘allurements
of the eyes’, Augustine considered curiositas to be one of the
chief vices.89
Curiositas operates, however, through the ‘mediation’ of
memory—th at is,
through the images that the memory presents and reflects
upon—and in this man-
ner, the memory, which is ‘the site within the soul marked by
the "habits” of the
heart’, functions as a kind of ‘portal’ between the past and the
present, where one’s
past habits are able to come to life in the present.90 In the
words of Pamela Bright,
the memory functions as the ‘continuation of the earlier trap th
at continues long
after the original act (of falling into the trap] is over’.91 It is
the ‘re-presentation,’
(1986), 53.
86 John M. Rist, ‘Awe-ful Augustine: Sin, Freedom, and
Inscrutability’, in Augustine Deformed:
Love, Sin, and Freedom in the Western Moral Tradition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2014), 28-61 (59); see also P. Remes, 'Inwardness and
Infinity of Selfhood: From
Plotinus to Augustine’, in Ancient Philosophy o f the Self, ed.
by P. Remes and J. Sihvola (New
York: Springer, 2008), 155-76 (174).

87 C. Vaught, Access to God in Augustine’s Confessions:
Books X-XII1 (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 2005), 81.
89 Natale Joseph Torchia, ‘Curiosity’, in Fitzgerald (ed.),
Augustine through the Ages, 259-61.
90 P. Fredriksen, ‘The Confessions as Autobiography’, in A
Companion to Augustine, ed. by
Mark Vessey, Blackwell Companion to the Ancient World
(Malden: Blackwell, 2012), 87-
98 (96-97).
91 Bright, ‘Book Ten: The Self Seeking God Who Creates and
Heals’, 163.
so to speak, of that same trap over and over again, and each
time it succeeds in its
ensnaring of one’s soul, it tastes better. Hence, ‘But now the
necessity of habit is
sweet to me, and it is against this sweetness that I must fight,
lest I be enthralled by
it' (Conf. 10.31.43).92 And, of course, by ‘fight’, Augustine
recognises that, in and of
himself, he does not stand a chance—divine grace, rather, is
always necessary: 'My
life is full of such lapses, and my one hope is your great mercy’
[Conf. 10.35.57).93
It is important to note, however, that Augustine views the
‘portal’ of memory as

a kind of double-edged sword, for also within the memory is his
God: ‘Thou hast
done this honour to my memory to take up thy abode in if
[Conf 10.25.36).94 Having
the capacity for two very different outcomes, Augustine thus
calls this ‘portal’ his
pondus (commonly translated in English versions of the
Confessions as ‘weight’).95
The concept has its roots in the classical Greek philosophers,
who spoke of the four
'classical elements' (fire, air, water, and earth) as continually
seeking their pondus
(i.e. their ‘proper places’).96 Pondus, therefore, includes both
gravitas (‘heaviness’)
and levitas (Tightness’)—and this 'neutrality of weight' became
for Augustine a
model for a twofold, bidirectional love.97 He writes [Conf
13.7.8; 13.9.10),
How can I speak of this pondere (weight) of concupiscence,
which drags
us downward into the deep abyss, and [the weight] of love (that
is, a love
for God) which lifts us up by thy Spirit who hovered over the
waters ... For
concupiscence and love are not certain places into which we are
plunged,
and out of which we are lifted again ... They are both feelings;
they are both
amores (loves) ... A pondus does not tend downward only, but
moves to its
own place. Fire tends upward; a stone tends downward. They
are propelled
by their own weight, seeking their own places. Oil poured under
the water
rises above the water; and water poured on oil sinks under the o

i l ... Pondus
meum amor meus, eoferor quocumque feror (my weight is my
love; by it, I am
carried wherever I am carried).98
The directions of the twofold love here, then, are the two
things, or the two con-
cepts, that Augustine has used so far as predicates for pondus —
'[M]y own weight
... was carnal habit' [Conf. 10.7.23), referring to his
concupiscence, i.e. his love of the
lustful things of the flesh; 'My weight is my love’ [Conf.
13.9.8), referring to his reli-
gious affections, i.e. his love for his God. Both of these amores,
although necessarily
antithetical, are housed together in the memory, operating as a
kind of 'cognitive
93 Ibid., 235. See also Conf 10.30.42, ibid., 226.
94 Ibid., 223.
95 Fredriksen, ‘The Confessions as Autobiography’, 97.
96 Frederick Van Fleteren, ‘Natural Place' in Fitzgerald (ed.),
Augustine through the Ages,
584-85.
97 As noted by Susan Schreiner, 'Introduction: Augustine Our
Contemporary', in Augustine
Our Contemporary: Examining the Self in Past and Present, ed.
by Willemien Otten and
Susan Schreiner (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
2018), loc. 15 of 620,
Scribd.

M em oria a n d th e Lust Disease EQ • 129
gravitational force’ that drags the subject in two completely
opposite directions."
As such, an anthropological self-division in the Christian is
once again the conclu-
sion of Augustine's thought.
Thus, if the reader approaches the Confessions with a hope of
finding a quick
solution to their struggles with their own concupiscence, they
may find themselves
putting the book down in disappointment. While Augustine does
see a certain val-
ue in having his Confessions read by fellow concupiscent
believers—that they may
'stop dozing along in despair ... but will instead awake in the
love of [God’s] mercy
and the sweetness of [his] grace, by which he that is weak is
strong’ (Conf. 10.3.4)—
he ultimately gives no solution to the problem of post-
conversion concupiscence.100
Indeed, throughout the book, Augustine articulates a deep-
seated regret toward
his pre-conversion sexual life, even going as far as regretting
his unwilful dreams;
while at the same time acknowledging that, by his own resolve,
he cannot do any-
thing to erase those images that are now 'fixed' in his
memory.101 Christians who
experience this surely know the guilt that such rumination can
produce, for they

know, as Augustine w rites elsewhere, th at 'God commands
some things which we
cannot do, in order that we might know w hat we ought to ask of
him’ (contra the
Pelagian ‘ought implies can' doctrine); and therefore, one’s
inability by no means
reduces their culpability.102 Due to his reflections on statem
ents like these, Robert
J. O’Connell suggests th at Augustine’s thought here has
produced 'some of the most
depressing reading in all of Christian literature’, chronicling no
less than 'the exces-
sive wariness of a man who has been burned by sense-delights’,
only then to face
the ever-present burning of the m em o ry of these delights.103
Others, however, recognise great value in Augustine’s
conclusions, for if the
reader discovers anything, it will surely be a refreshing dose of
honesty. As one
author has put it,
If you feel that your w orst enemies are still inside you—e.g.
guilt, or lust, or a
constantly defeated Christian life—then Augustine’s
Confessions may just be
the book for you ... Augustine’s honesty and openness before
God are so re-
freshing and relieving to a lifetime of bottling things up and
postponing that
catharsis of soul which many of us need so badly.104
99 Vault, 201; cf. Rethinking Trinitarian Theology: Disputed
Questions and Contemporary
Issues in Trinitarian Theology, ed. by Giulio Maspero and
Robert J. Wozniak (New York:

Continuum, 2012), 394-95. Here, it is said that, by chasing the
love of concupiscence,
'we stumble with our restless, disoriented, confused desires’
perpetually 'dragging us’
downward.
101 Rist, Augustine Deformed, 58.
102 Augustine, 'A Treatise on Grace and Free-Will’, in Dods
(ed.), The Anti-Pelagian Works, III,
46.
103 Robert J. O’Connell, St. Augustine's Confessions: The
Odyssey o f the Soul (New York:
Fordham University Press, 1989), 133.
104 James M. Houston, Because o f Christ: Living Out the Gift
o f God through Faith (Colorado
Springs: Cook, 2005), 208.
With this in mind, the present work will conclude with a
consideration of Augus-
tine's final section of Book Ten, along with a last pursuit for a
potential exhortation
that can be drawn from its contents for those enduring the
residual pondus of post-
conversion concupiscence.
V. Conclusions
It has been argued above that those with memories of a pre-
conversion sexual life

will have no means of erasing such memories, and no
guarantees at all of a place in
the fallen world in which the memories will not present
themselves. While it is true
that, upon conversion, none of their pre-conversion sexual sins
(or any of their sins
at all, for that matter) will be held against them in the divine
court of law, it is also
true that the numerous effects of those sins, to which they once
gave consent, might
remain with them for the rest of their mortal existence. Having
formed the habits,
and having the images fixed in their minds, rest from
concupiscence, wherein their
amores will be directed appropriately toward God, will seem to
them like a distant
reality. As Bernard McGinn puts it, for all those who are 'still
caught in the toils of
fallen flesh, any interior vision of God’s nature (i.e. any
beatific vision), and any oth-
er experience of God in the spiritual senses, [is] always partial
and fleeting’.105 The
inner vision of concupiscence, conversely, is constant (Conf
10.37.60; 10.40.65;
10.41.66):
By these temptations, we are daily tried, O Lord; we are tried
unceasingly ...
in this matter, you know the groans of my heart, and the rivers
of my eyes,
for I am not able to know for certain how far I am clean of this
plague; and 1
stand in great fear of all my secret faults, which your eyes
perceive, though
mine do n o t... But still, by these aerumnosis ponderibus
(wretched weights) of

mine, I reccido (relapse) into these common things, and am
sucked in by my
old customs, and am held. 1 sorrow much, yet 1 am still closely
held. To this
extent, then, the burden of habit presses us down. I can exist in
this fashion,
but I do not wish to do so. In that other way I wish I were, but I
am not able to
be; miser utrubique (in both ways I am miserable) ... With a
wounded heart,
I have seen thy brightness, and having been beaten back, I
cried, ‘Who can
attain to it? I am cut off from before your eyes.’ You are the
Truth, presiding
over all things; but I, because of my covetousness, did not wish
to lose you.
But still, along with you, 1 wished also to possess a lie ... By
this I lost you, for
you will not condescend to be enjoyed along with a lie.106
As discussed above, the content of Augustine's Confessions
offers no method to re-
move the 'wretched weights’ of the memory that cause a person
to relapse into
‘carnal habit’. Hence the observation of Jean-Franfois Lyotard,
who notes that, after
thirteen books of arduous confession, 'the penitent finds himself
on the threshold
105 B. McGinn, ‘Visions and Visualisations in the Here and
Hereafter’, Harvard Theological
Review, 98/3 (2005), 227-46 (230).
106 Augustine, ‘Confessions’, 237, 240-41.

of [God’s] door, still being stuck in the pall of affairs, pulling
in every direction on
the harness of the before, or the after’.107 In this way,
Augustine—never ceasing to
offer his confession—dem onstrated th at the very act of
confession itself Is imma-
nently repetitive (i.e., as Lyotard puts it, 'the soul can think of
nothing but returning
to its crimes’].108 W hether it was his first year since
conversion or his thirteenth,
his prayer remained the same—eripe me ab omni temptatione,
'Deliver me from all
temptation!’ (Con/ 10.31.46 cf. Matt. 6:13].109
Perhaps rather than searching for a method of addressing the
‘weight’ of mem
ory in the content of the Confessions, then, somewhat of a
method might be the act
of confession itself. We might say that, for those Christians
with a pre-conversion
sexual life, the memory is twice scarred—firstly, by the
'images’ of past sexual sins;
and secondly, by God himself, or more specifically, by God’s
‘entry’ into memo
ry.110 The former have been ‘fixed’ there—placed in one of the
'cells’ of a 'w onder
ful filing system’ (Conf. 10.9.16]—by sexual habit, but the
latter cannot be ‘fixed’
anywhere, for 'place, there is none’ wherein God might be 'filed
away’, so to speak
(iConf. 10.26.37].* * 111 And yet, Augustine makes clear
several times in his work that
his search for God in memory is ultimately dependent upon the

‘spokeness’, or the
‘communicability’, of his confessions (e.g. Conf. 10.1.1; 10.2.2;
10.3.3].112 Therefore,
we may say that God is not 'in place’ within the memory, b ut
God may indeed be
known through confession, which does not proceed from a
'place', but rather, ‘dis
places memory (that is, it surpasses the "spacious halls of
memory," along with
its "wonderful filing system’’] and refigures it within the
"confessive expression"
itself’.113 In short, through the rhetorical act of confession,
God is remembered, and
he is remembered without being 'placed'.
How might this confessive remembrance assist the Christian
resist images or
habits from a pre-conversion sexual life? As noted at the
beginning of this paper,
it is improbable (perhaps impossible in some contexts] for
contemporary Chris-
tians to navigate through the hypersexualised twenty-first
century West without
unwillingly being exposed to, and even drawn toward, the
allurements of fallen
sexuality—and those with memories of consenting to such
allurements (and thus,
of having formed sexual ‘habits’, giving rise to a 'necessity']
will have little hope of
resistance apart from divine aid. Of course, as the people whom
the New Testament
describes as ‘sojourners and exiles' in the present world (1 Pet.
2:11], the appropri-
ate Christian response may not be to engage in any kind of
iconoclastic destruction
of advertisements featuring underw ear models, for, while it

may sound fatalistic,
107 Jean-Franfois Lyotard, The Confession o f Augustine, trans.
by Richard Beardsworth
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000], 14.
108 Ibid. See also Dave Tell, 'Beyond Mnemotechnics:
Confession and Memory in Augustine’,
Philosophy and Rhetoric 39/3 (2006], 233-53 (248].
110 Tell, ‘Beyond Mnemotechnics’, 248.
111 Augustine, 'Confessions’, 211, 224.
112 For more on this, see Brian Stock, Augustine the Reader:
Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and
the Ethics o f Interpretation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1996], 213.
113 Tell, ‘Beyond Mnemotechnics’, 249.
the world is by no means going to change for the sake of
Christian sexual purity.
Perhaps by means of Augustinian confessive expression,
through the displace-
ment of memory, the concupiscent Christian might remember
God—and in this
way, rather than giving consent to sexual habit, they might turn
and do as Joseph
once did (Gen. 39:11-12):
But one day, when [Joseph] went into the house to do his work,

and none of
the men of the house were there in the house, [Potiphar's wife]
caught him
by his garment, saying, 'Lay with me.’ But he left his garment
in her hand, and
he fled and got out of the house.
Abstract
It is increasingly difficult for Christians in the twenty-first
century West to avoid the
influence of a hypersexualised culture, particularly for
Christians with memories
of a sexual life (outside of marriage) prior to conversion. The
classic case of this
category is that of Augustine, who spoke of‘the images of such
things as [his] sexual
habits had fixed’ in his memory, a symptom of what called ‘the
lust disease'. In his
Confessions, he engages in a philosophical enquiry into the
mysteries of the memo-
ry, searching for God in the ‘place’ of memory, but concluding
that the incorporeal
God cannot be found in a ‘place’. While it is impossible to erase
memories of one’s
pre-conversion sexual life through one's volition, Augustine
found that it is possible
to ‘displace’ memory so as to find the unplaceable God. In this
way, one might see
greater success in the struggle against residual, post-conversion
concupiscence.
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Shengxiong Jiang
Professor Juhn Ahn
Asian 257
Asian 257 Critical Term Dictionary
September 12, 2021
● Urbanization: Urbanization is the social process of the
population shifting from rural
areas to urban areas, which creates cities. Urbanization is a
common concept that
appears in our reading. According to Henry Smith’s article
Tokyo as an Idea, Japan is
urbanized one hundred percent, this represents all the
population in Japan are living in
the city. In ancient times, Japanese culture believed “The city is
similarly a place of
mediation between man and nature.” (Smith p.47) In the
beginning, people gathered

together to fulfill their basic needs for survival, markets and
farms were created,
which is the basic structure of the city. As the city developed,
people started to move
to the city from rural areas, which resulted in the city expanding
rapidly and
becoming more diversified. Unique arts and cultures were
created within the city. Not
only did the size of the city increase but the amount of the city
also increased
significantly. During the process of urbanization, there are
countless dissenting voices
against it, the majority of people think it will alter the culture
which they respect
completely. In my opinion, urbanization will not erase or make
a huge change to a
city’s culture and historical past, it will help the city combine
its past with the new
ideas and technologies and build a greater city together. I
believe urbanization is an
inevitable process for every single country in the world, it is a
great tool for the city’s
development. There are many great cities in Asia with rich
historical pasts, with no

doubt urbanization plays an extremely important role in their
development history.
● Confucianism: Confucianism is a type of cultural mainstream
thought and philosophy
that was invented in China by Confucius around 500 BC. The
entire history of China
has been influenced by Confucianism deeply. In Han Dynasty,
the Chinese
government had officially recognized and supported
Confucianism in education and
political areas, such as government decisions and pol icies. Later
in Tang Dynasty,
Confucianism caused more profound effects on government laws
policies. And a new
civil service examination system was created to select the
government’s officials. It
was called the Imperial examination, this system allowed
civilians to be government
officials through written examination. This provided a fair
environment for those
ordinary families. Not only China, Confucianism also made a
huge influence on the
other neighboring countries such as Japan and Korea in East

Asia, many of those
countries had also referred to Imperial examination from China.
According to Henry
Smith’s article Tokyo as an Idea, “On top an explicit and highly
intellectual structure
of thought evolved under the Tokugawa political system and
molded by Confucian
ideology.” (Smith, p.47) As we can see, during Japan’s
Tokugawa period,
Confucianism has had a profound influence on the entire
Japanese culture, including
art, politics, and education. But in the late 19th century,
Confucianism was criticized
by people in China, many people believe that Confucianism led
to China's failure in
the early 20th century. After the founding of the new China,
Communism took the
place of Confucianism. But after the Chinese economic reform
in 1978, Confucianism
was brought up again by the people and government.
● Colonialism: Colonialism is the policy of a country to control
another country’s land,

resources, and people through war or peace method.
Colonialism generally exists in
powerful countries to obtain resources and wealth from less
powerful countries, the
powerful country will establish the colonial government to rule
the less power
country, which is called colony. Because the colonial
governments usually are more
advanced in military and technology, the relationship between
colonists and
indigenous population are unequal. European colonial period
started at the beginning
of the 15th century, many European countries established
colonizing empires, such as
British Empire, French Colonial Empire, and Dutch Empire.
According to
Colonialism and Urban Development, “European empires of the
so-called ‘Age of
Discovery’ were the outcome of the overseas trading and
military intentions of
maritime powers.” (Anthony D. King p.1) Their armies and
business ships had been
to many continents and countries, including Asia. The
colonialism shaped various

great Asian cities,
● Segregation:
C O M M E N T A R Y
Asexuality and Disability: Strange but Compatible
Bedfellows
Emily M. Lund • Bayley A. Johnson
Published online: 27 September 2014
� Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
Abstract While the disability sexuality movement has long tried
to distance itself from
the usually incorrect assumption that people with disabilities
are asexual, the growing
asexuality visibility and education movement argues for
recognition of asexuality—the
lifelong, non-distressing absence of sexual attraction to people
of any sex or gender—as a
legitimate and non-pathological sexual orientation. Despite
these seemly contradictory
goals, however, both movements are representative of the
movements of historically
marginalized and medicalized groups towards greater
acceptance and understanding.

Accordingly, this article will begin with a brief discussion of
theories and terminology
related to asexuality in the general population. The remainder of
the article will discuss (1)
the history of asexuality as a forced assumption of people with
disabilities; (2) intersec-
tionality as it relates to asexuality and disability; and (3) the
similarities between the
asexuality and disability sexuality movements. Suggestions for
future research are also
provided.
Keywords Sexuality � Asexuality � Sexuality and disability �
Disability �
Sexual orientation � United States
Modern scholarship and grassroots organization have seen the
growth of two separate
social movements, the disability sexuality movement and the
asexuality visibility and
education movement. The former seeks to throw off the
unwanted label of asexuality [15]
while the latter seeks to promote the recognition of asexuality—
commonly defined as the
lack of sexual attraction to people of any gender [4] or the
lifelong and non-distressing lack

E. M. Lund (&)
Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation, Utah State
University, Logan, UT 84322, USA
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
B. A. Johnson
Multnomah University, Portland, OR, USA
123
Sex Disabil (2015) 33:123–132
DOI 10.1007/s11195-014-9378-0
of sexual desire [6]—as a legitimate sexuality orientation
analogous to heterosexuality,
homosexuality, and bisexuality. Although this conceptualization
of asexuality has been
met with some skepticism from the medical and psychological
communities, a growing
body of empirical literature on the topic supports the idea that
asexuality can be a benign
and immutable sexual orientation rather than a pathology. To
this end, AVEN was founded
in 2001 with the goals of ‘‘creating public acceptance and
discussion of asexuality and
facilitating the growth of an asexual community’’ [3] and hosts
information on asexuality

as well as discussion forums for the discussion of asexuality
and related topics.
Parallel to growing movement for recognition among self-
identified asexual people,
individuals with disabilities have long been working to have
their sexuality recognized and
given legitimacy [22]. Historically, people with disabilities
have been incorrectly assumed
to lack sexual desire and function. As a result, those involved in
the disability sexuality
movement are often opposed to the idea of asexuality in the
context of disability, seeing it
as a wrongful label forcibly placed on them by a society that is
ill-informed at best and
oppressive at worst [15].
Purpose
At first blush, the asexuality and disability sexuality movements
seem to be at odds with
each other—one trying to legitimatize what the other is trying
to dispel. In this article,
however, we will argue that both movements are representative
of the movements of
historically marginalized and medicalized groups towards
greater acceptance and under-

standing. Accordingly, this article will begin with a review of
theories and terminology
related to asexuality in the general population. The remainder of
the article will discuss (1)
the history of asexuality as a forced assumption of people with
disabilities; (2) intersec-
tionality as it relates to asexuality and disability; and (3) the
similarities between the
asexuality and disability sexuality movements. Suggestions for
future research are also
provided.
Defining Asexuality
Defining and Differentiating Sexual Desire, Arousal, and
Behavior
One key necessity in discussing and defining asexuality is to
define and differentiate sexual
desire from other similar but distinct concepts. Sexual desire is
often assumed to be
synonymous, or at least immutably linked, with both sexual
arousal and sexual behavior,
but research has revealed that the relationship between the three
constructs is muddled at
best [7]. For example, research has found that women may have

consensual sex for reasons
other than sexual desire itself [10]. These reasons include
wanting to please a partner,
wanting to relieve tension, or wanting to get pregnant. In these
situations, sexual behavior
may occur without explicit sexual desire or attraction. Likewise,
sexual desire or arousal
can occur without sexual behavior [10]. For instance, a woman
may desire to have sex but
not have a partner with whom to do so [10]; Nosek et al. [17]
found that this may be a more
common issue among women with disabilities, who tended to
report more difficulty finding
sexual and romantic partners than their counterparts without
disabilities. Furthermore,
people may experience sexual desire but not sexual arousal due
to a physical or health
condition [7, 10], and research has yet to establish a standard
definition of what constitutes
124 Sex Disabil (2015) 33:123–132
123
low, normal, or high sexual desire. This adds a great deal of

personality subjectivity of the
diagnostic process and conceptualization of abnormal sexual
desire.
Differentiating Sexual and Romantic Attraction
In addition to differentiating between sexual desire, arousal,
and behavior, the asexual
community also differentiates between sexual and romantic
attraction. To this end, many
self-identified asexual people may describe themselves using
terms such as ‘‘heteroro-
mantic,’’ ‘‘homoromantic,’’ and ‘‘biromantic’’ to indicate that,
while they have no desire to
pursue sexual relations with other people, they do have a desire
to engage in intimate,
romantic relationships with other people of specific genders or
sexes [8, 11]. A survey of
self-identified asexual people by AVEN [5] found that 82.5 %
of respondents identified as
having an active romantic orientation. The remainder (17.5 %)
identified as aromantic as
well as asexual, indicating that, although they may pursue close
platonic relationships, they
had no desire to pursue either romantic or sexual relationships
with other people.

Theories of Asexuality
Hyposexual Drive Disorder
Psychologists and psychiatrists have discussed asexuality in
relation to hyposexual desire
disorder (HSDD) [1, 2], and there is still marked debate in the
literature over whether or
not the two differ as well as the validity of both. In the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR)
[1], HSDD is defined
simply as ‘‘persistently or recurrently deficient (or absent)
sexual fantasies and desire for
sexual activity’’ that cause ‘‘marked distress or interpersonal
difficulty’’ [1, p. 541]. Thus,
as with all DSM-IV-TR diagnoses, the given behavior or
symptomology must cause
marked personal distress, life dysfunction, or both in order to be
considered a diagnosable
disorder [1]. In the DSM 5 [2], the criteria for HSDD were
changed to reflect a better
understanding of the multidimensionality of sexual desire,
sexual arousal, and sexual
behavior [7]; as with all DSM 5 diagnoses, the distress and

dysfunction criteria remained
[2].
The requirement of marked personal distress or interpersonal
dysfunction has been a
point of contention between clinicians who diagnose HSDD and
the asexual community.
Researchers have found that most self-identified asexual people
do not report feeling
distress as a result of their lack of sexual desire or attraction [8,
20]. As a result, many
asexuality researchers have used the presence or absence of
distress or dysfunction caused
by the lack of sexual desire to differentiate asexuality and
HSDD [6, 8].
Physiological and Psychological Pathology as an Explanation
for Asexuality
It is well noted that a wide variety of physical conditions may
affect sexual desire,
including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hormonal
and endocrine problems,
among others [16]. Similarly, psychological factors such as
stress and depression symp-
toms may affect sexual desire [16], and loss or decrease of
sexual desire may be a symptom

of some psychological disorders, such as major depression,
specific phobia, and traumatic
stress related to sexual assault [1, 2]. However, it is important
to note that these conditions
Sex Disabil (2015) 33:123–132 125
123
often result in changes in sexual desire rather than a continual
absence of it and that such
changes are often distressing to the people experiencing them
[1, 2, 16]. Conversely,
asexuality is defined as lifelong lack of sexual attraction or
desire [4] that does not result in
psychological distress [6] and people who experience a sudden
and distressing decrease in
sexual desire will not meet those criteria. Some psychological
conditions, such as
schizotypal personality disorder or Asperger’s syndrome [1]
may result in global social
isolation—including sexual isolation. However, such conditions
must impair overall
functioning, not just sexual desire or activity. Thus, if these
conditions could explain

asexuality, one would expect to see extremely high rates of
these disorders among self-
identified asexual people.
Although research concerning self-identified asexual people is
just emerging, a study of
187 self-identified asexual people recruited from the AVEN
forums found that participants
did not have significantly elevated rates of depression,
interpersonal difficulties, mental
health diagnoses, or physiological sexual dysfunction. About
half of participants did report
elevated scores on the Social Withdrawal scale of a personality
assessment; however, other
factors, such as the possibility that items on the scale may have
tapped into romantic or
sexual relationships, recruitment methods, or social isolation
due to marginalization may
have impacted these result. Although more research is needed in
this area, Brotto et al. [8]
results support the theory that asexuality often exists i n the
absence of physiological or
psychological dysfunction.
The asexuality visibility and education movement does not deny

that medical and
psychological conditions can affect sexual desire. In fact,
AVEN [4] suggests that indi-
viduals experiencing a concerning decrease in sexual desire or
issues with sexual arousal
first visit a physician to rule out any possible medical causes
for these symptoms. However,
the asexuality visibility and education movement does posit that
an innate lack of sexual
attraction or desire is not necessarily pathological [4]. Simply
classifying asexuality as
HSDD is also problematic given the distress criterion present in
the DSM and the fact that
many self-identified asexual people report no such distress
surrounding their lack of sexual
desire. This lack of distress and the general lifelong nature of
their lack of sexual desire
[20], have lead many people in the asexual community to reject
the idea of asexuality as a
disorder or deficit but to instead regard it as an immutable but
benign facet of their identity
[8], similar to how homosexuality, heterosexuality, and
bisexuality are now commonly
conceptualized [11].

Assumed Asexuality and the Disability Sexuality Movement
The Myth of Asexuality and Disability
Historically, people with disabilities have been denied a sexual
identity within Western
society [22]. In the extreme, they have been forcibly sterilized
or denied the right to marry
[12]; more subtle prejudice dictates that people with disabilities
are de facto not sexually
attractive or incapable of having sex or pleasing a partner [15,
22]. Milligan and Neufeldt
[15] refer to this as the ‘‘myth of asexuality.’’
Milligan and Neufeldt [15] conceptualize the myth of asexuality
and disability as
having two primary faces. First, some may assume that because
people with disabilities,
especially those with physical disabilities, have limited
opportunities for sexual gratifi-
cation, their actual desire for sexual activity is also greatly
decreased or non-existent. This
type of ‘‘asexuality myth’’ may be particularly common with
regards to people with spinal
126 Sex Disabil (2015) 33:123–132

123
cord injury, as the injury itself can interfere with physical
sexual functioning [22]. The
second type of presumed asexuality is based around cognitive
capacity and functioning,
rather than physical functioning, and thus is often applied to
individuals with cognitive,
intellectual, and psychiatric disabilities. This theory holds that
individuals with these
disabilities lack the ability to understand and consent to sexual
activity and therefore
should not learn about or engage in it even as legal adults [15].
Although these individuals
may be granted the physical ability to engage in sexual behavior
by society, the myth of
asexuality nevertheless dictates that they should never seek to
do so and that any desire to
engage in even consensual sexual activity is deviant.
Because of these historical—and still persistent—attitudes
towards the sexuality of
people with disabilities, modern advocates, activists, and
scholars in the disability com-

munity have worked to disprove and dispel such attitudes. For
example, Nosek et al. [17]
conducted a survey of 946 women with physical disabilities and
an equal-size comparison
sample of women without disabilities. They reported that even
though respondents with
disabilities tended to report less sexual activity and opportunity,
both groups reported
similar levels of sexual desire. Thus, the researchers conclude
that the difference between
the two groups can be largely accounted for by the difficulties
that many women with
physical disabilities face when finding a sexual/romantic
partner. Highlighting this point,
the report quotes a woman with a severe physical disabi lity
saying, ‘‘I’m sure I could
function just fine sexually, if I could only find a man!’’ [17].
Assumptions of the Disability Sexuality Movement and
Implications for Asexuality
Perhaps the chief assumption of the disability sexuality
movement is that the myth of
asexuality and disability is just that—a myth. Thus, people with
disabilities are assumed
to have inherent and in-born sexuality and the right to express

this sexuality consen-
sually. By and large, this assumption is correct—like people
without disabilities, people
with disabilities almost always have a desire for sexual intimacy
and activity [17].
However, an absolutist interpretation of this idea has troubling
implications for self-
identified asexual people. First of all, the assumption that
people always experience
sexual desire and attraction in effect erases the ability of people
to identify as asexual.
Second, total ignorance or dismissal of asexuality as a
legitimate sexual orientation could
cast people with disabilities who identify as asexual as
opponents of the disability
sexuality movement, instead of another marginalized group
working for recognition and
legitimacy.
The Intersection Asexuality and Disability
Intersectionality and Disability
On a basic level, asexuality may appear to contradict the very
goals of the disability rights
movement as this movement pertains to sexuality. However, if

one considers asexuality to
be a legitimate sexual orientation then it stands to reason that at
least some people with
disabilities are also asexual. This is especially true given that
preliminary research has
suggested the rates of asexuality may be higher in individuals
with Asperger’s than in able-
bodied matched controls [8]. However, a vast majority of
individuals with Asperger’s
report experiencing dyadic sexual desire [9]. That is to say, the
existence of asexuality in
people with disabilities does not prove the broader myth of
asexuality and disability. As in
Sex Disabil (2015) 33:123–132 127
123
the general population, the vast majority of people with
disabilities are heterosexual, but,
as would be expected, there are also considerable numbers of
people with disabilities who
are homosexual or bisexual [9, 17, 18]. Therefore, it stands to
reason that there are also
people with disabilities who are asexual and that the two things

need not necessarily be
linked by a joint cause.
Research has consistently shown that disability status interacts
with other personal
characteristics or minority statuses to influence a person’s
experiences. For example,
studies of interpersonal violence and help-seeking in people
with disabilities who are also
members of other marginalized groups may face compounding
barriers to addressing abuse
as a result of how their multiple identities interacted. In a study
of racially, ethnically, and
culturally diverse people with disabilities, Lightfoot and
Williams [14] found that Deaf and
hard of hearing individuals who used a non-standard dialect of
American Sign Language
faced the dual barrier of finding shelters or service providers
who both provided inter-
preting services and were knowledgeable about their culture.
Indeed, participants in
Lightfoot and William’s [14] study frequently reported feeling
pressure to choose between
their cultural and disability-related needs when seeking help.
Thus, the intersectionality of

their disability and cultural identity was affecting their lives in
very real ways and yet was
often ignored or dismissed.
Disability and Sexual Minority Status
Concerning the intersection of disability and sexual minority
status specifically, O’Toole
[18], a lesbian with a disability, has written about the
challenges that lesbians with
disability face in confronting both ableism from the larger
lesbian community and
homophobia from the larger disability community. She also
writes about how both the
primary assumption of asexuality and the secondary assumption
of heterosexuality in
people with disabilities disability create additional identity
issues for lesbian and bisexual
women with disabilities. Similar to the themes noted in
Lightfoot and Williams’ [14]
study, O’Toole and Brown [19] also discuss the pressures
lesbians with disabilities
sometimes feel to choose between their co-occurring identities
of lesbianism, woman-
hood, and disability status and the challenges that lesbian and

bisexual women with
disabilities can face when searching for medical providers who
understand both disability
and sexual minority issues.
Asexuality in Disability Narratives
Kim [13] writes of difficulty of integrating asexuality into
disability narratives. She
discusses the historical tension between the two and the lack of
discussion of
‘‘embodied’’ asexuality in disability narratives. It is suggested
that the history of
imposed asexuality in the disability community can create
barriers to discussing
asexuality in disability narratives, for fear of imposing old
stereotypes on the authors.
Thus, although Kim cites a narrative by a woman with physical
disability that discusses
the woman’s non-distressing disinterest in sexual behavior, she
is careful not to label
the author or the narrative as explicitly asexual. It is likely that
people with disabilities
may feel the same way about disclosing or discussing the
possibility of asexuality as an

orientation; because the term has such negative connotations in
the disability com-
munity, it risks being left out of the broader conversation on
disability and sexuality
altogether.
128 Sex Disabil (2015) 33:123–132
123
Similarities Between the Asexuality and Disability Sexuality
Movements:
A Movement Away from Medical Models
Whereas asexuality may be regarded with suspicion or disbelief
in general society, the
assumption of asexuality has been forced, usually inaccurately,
on many people with
disabilities. In other words, ‘‘people’’ are assumed to be sexual
while ‘‘people with dis-
abilities’’ are assumed to be asexual [13]. In this way, people
with disabilities are
‘‘othered’’—a sexuality that would be viewed skeptically in an
able-bodied or ‘‘normal’’
person is assumed as a default or likelihood among people with
disabilities. This may

imply that people with disabilities exist separate from the
typical conceptualizations of
humanity and human normalcy. Because such beliefs can be
seen as dehumanizing, there
has been a concentrated pushback against these attitudes from
within the disability com-
munity and the disability rights movement.
Disability
The medical model of disability holds that disability is a
medical issue that must be cured
or treated. This ideology places people at an inherently
suboptimal level [22], as it can be
used to promulgate the idea that that only by ridding themselves
of the disability can the
person again achieve ‘‘whole’’ personhood. The assumption of
asexuality in disability can
be seen as a result of this medical model of disability. First, the
onset of a disability is
sometimes assumed to be a cessation of their sexual identity.
For example, people with
spinal cord injuries were often incorrectly assumed to have lost
all sexual function, ability,
and desire at the onset of their injuries [15, 22] and thus the

assumption of sexuality pre-
injury became an assumption of asexuality post-injury.
Additionally, the acquisition of a disability often causes
individuals to be seen as less
desirable as a sexual and romantic partner [17, 22], leading to
portrayals of the spouses and
partners of disabilities as noble and self-sacrificing ‘‘saints’’
who have given up the chance
at a ‘‘normal,’’ loving, and sexually fulfilling relationship in
order to care for their partner
with a disability [15]. Such attitudes paint people with
disabilities as people who are
incapable of actively participating in mutually fulfilling
relationships and thus are de facto
asexual.
In an effort to distance itself from these views, the disability
sexuality movement has
broken sharply away from the medical model and towards the
sociopolitical model of
disability [22]. Under the sociopolitical model, the sexuality of
people with disabilities is
seen not as a matter of medical absence or threat but rather as
one of sociopolitical

oppression and suppression [22] at worst and ignorance at best
[15].
Asexuality
Although the social history of self-identified asexual people is
much shorter and quieter
than that of people with disabilities and the disability sexuality
movement, it nevertheless
remains heavily influenced by the medical model [21]. As
discussed above, until quite
recently, the idea of asexuality in humans was considered solely
as a medical or psy-
chological problem in need of a cure. Even as society becomes
more accepting of non-
heterosexual sexual orientations, the underlying assumption that
everyone must be sexually
attracted to someone remains. Asexuality is perhaps first
assumed to be a sign of a
physiological or hormonal issue [6]. If a physiological cause for
asexuality is ruled out,
assumptions are made regarding possible psychological causes.
In fact, the assumptions
Sex Disabil (2015) 33:123–132 129
123

that asexuality must be linked to some sort of psychological
issue has led some self-
identified asexual people to feel the need to hide or downplay
psychological distress, even
if the distress is unrelated to their asexuality [8]. Fear that their
sexual identity could be
stigmatized may lead some self-identified asexual people to
avoid seeking treatment for
psychological problems or to lie about or misrepresent their
sexual orientation in order to
avoid stigma or the assumption that their asexuality can or
should be ‘‘fixed.’’
As with the disability rights movement, the asexuality education
and visibility move-
ment has generally moved away from the medical model of
asexuality into a sociopolitical
model in which asexuality is viewed as a legitimate and healthy
but marginalized sexual
orientation. Although many asexual people are curious about the
cause of asexuality [20]
and believe it to be biologically based in the same manner as
other sexual orientations [8],
they generally do not feel the need or desire for asexuality to be

cured. Instead, asexual
people often wish to be acknowledged as a legitimate sexual
minority that is in need of
acceptance and visibility [3, 4].
Conclusion and Future Directions
The Integration of Asexuality into the Disability Sexuality
Movement
When examining asexuality in the context of disability, it is
important to note that the
asexuality education and visibility movement is not suggesting
that asexuality is the default
sexuality for any group of people. Rather, they are simply
advocating that it be recognized
as a valid and non-pathological variant of human sexuality and
that asexuality should be
included in the broader social conversation and
conceptualization of human sexuality.
Recognizing this view would allow asexuality to be more easily
integrated into conver-
sations on sexuality and disability. Rather than being the
expected or assumed sexuality of
people with disabilities, asexuality could be discussed as one of
several possible sexual

orientations of people with—and without—disabilities.
A Non-pathologizing Model for Researching Asexuality and
Disability
Within the area of asexuality and disability, there are many
research questions that should
be explored. For example, what is the prevalence of asexuality
among people with dis-
abilities? Is this prevalence higher or lower than in samples
using similar methodology in
the general population? Is the prevalence of asexuality higher or
lower in certain disability
categories than others? For asexual people with disabilities,
how do the co-occurring
experiences of asexuality and disability influence each other?
Although the empirical and scholarly literature on asexuality is
growing, it remains a
relatively nascent area of research. Perhaps as a result, little
work has looked at the
intersection of asexuality and disability through a dual
affirming lens. This dual affirming
view of asexuality and disability would examine both
phenomena not as deficits in need of
cure but as both marginalized or minority social statuses and
legitimate personal charac-

teristics and identities. Such a framework would avoid pitting
the two groups against each
other, either by framing disability as an assumed cause of
asexuality (pathologizing
asexuality) or by framing asexual people with disabilities as
undesirable or deviant indi-
viduals who detract from the normalcy of the asexual
community (pathologizing disabil-
ity). Rather, scholars might do well to take a neutral stance on
any connection between
disability status and asexual orientation, working with the null
hypothesis that the two
130 Sex Disabil (2015) 33:123–132
123
characteristics are distinct things that can nevertheless co-
occur. Although it is possible
that this null hypothesis could be revised in the face of
substantial empirical evidence to
the contrary (e.g., much higher rates of certain disabilities
among asexual people or vice
versa), one must still keep in mind that many or most self-
identified asexual people are not

disabled and most people with disabilities are not asexual. Even
the connection of certain
conditions to asexuality does not mean that asexuality and
disability are linked for all
disabling conditions or for all individuals with those conditions.
This assumed neutrality
would allow researchers to explore the intersection of
asexuality and disability as a social
phenomenon rather than a search for etiology.
Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Julie F.
Smart, PhD, for her assistance with earlier
drafts of this manuscript.
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