Historical Origins And Development Of Christian Marriage

Despite challenges from some quarters, Judaism and the early Christians considered marriage a good gift from God, part of God's good creation. Marriage is considered a sacrament by both Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians. The Orthodox permit divorce under certain conditions; most Protestant denominations, for whom marriage is a covenant rather than a sacrament, permit divorce under a broader range of circumstances.

Marriage in the Bible The Old Testament portrays the God Yahweh as the creator of 'adam, man and woman (Gen. 1:27; 5:2). The fact that Yahweh names male and female together 'adam, humankind, founds their equality as human beings. They are equally "?bone of bone, flesh of flesh?" (Gen. 2:23). It is only because they are equal that they can marry and become one person, in Hebrew "?one body?" (Gen. 2:24). As a gift of the Creator, marriage is good (Gen. 1:31) and has a religious significance in Israel. Since it is from God, it relates man and woman to God. God not only created 'adam sexual and for marriage, but also blessed him and her and marriage, and made them good. It is because God made them male and female to become one body (Gen. 2:24) that Yahweh later declares, "?I hate divorce … so do not be faithless?" (Mal. 2:16, rsv). Central to the Hebrew people's notion of its special relationship with God was the idea of the covenant. Yahweh is the God of Israel; Israel is the people of God. Together Yahweh and Israel form a communion of grace and salvation. Four of Israel's great prophets, Hosea, Jeremiah, Deutero-Isaiah, and Ezekiel, speak of this relationship in terms drawn from marriage. They preach about the covenant relationship of Yahweh and Israel in terms of a marriage to an unfaithful wife. They find in the marriage between a man and a woman an image in which to represent the relationship of Yahweh's covenant with Israel. On a superficial level, the marriage of Hosea and Gomer is like many other marriages. On a more profound level, it serves as prophetic symbol, revealing and celebrating in representation the covenant relationship between Yahweh and Israel. This conception of marriage as a prophetic symbol of a mutually faithful covenant is continued in the New Testament, with a minor change. Rather than presenting marriage as a symbol of the covenant between Yahweh and Israel, the letter to the Ephesians presents it as an image of the covenant between Christ and the church. The writer takes over a household code from tradition, but he critiques it in Ephesians 5:21 challenging the absolute authority of any one Christian group over any other—of husbands, for instance, over wives. He establishes a basic attitude for all Christians, an attitude of mutual giving way, so that their fundamental attitude may be to give reverence to Christ. As Christians are all admonished to give way to one another, it comes as no surprise that a wife is to give way to her husband (Eph. 5:22). What does come as a surprise, both then and now, is that a husband is to give way to his wife. That follows from the general instruction that Christians are to give way to one another. It follows also from the specific instruction given to husbands. That instruction is not that "?the husband is the head of the wife,?" but rather that "?in the same way that the Messiah is the head of the church is the husband the head of the wife.?" A Christian husband's headship over his wife is an image of Christ's headship over the Church. Since diakonia, or service, is Christ's way of exercising authority (Mark 10:45) and since it was as a servant that "?Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her?" (Eph. 5:25), a Christian husband is instructed to be head over his wife by serving and giving himself up for her. She is instructed, by implication, to do the same for him. Authority modeled on that of Christ does not mean domination; it means service. Christian spouses become servants one to the other. It is thus that their marriage becomes a prophetic symbol of the covenantal servant relationship between Christ and his church (Eph. 5:32). Divorce and remarriage are prohibited in the New Testament because God, in the beginning, made them male and female to become one body (Mark 10:8–9; Matt. 19:5–6). Teaching about Marriage in the Early Church The Christian church soon moved out of its parent Jewish culture into a Graeco-Roman one which reshaped the biblical doctrine about marriage. To understand Christian marriage today, we must first understand the early church's teaching. The early and anonymous Epistle to Diognetus (second century) portrays the general Christian situation. "?Neither in region nor in tongue nor in the social institutions of life do Christians differ from other men .… They take wives as all do.?" Clement of Alexandria (d. c. 215) employs a simple argument to show that marriage is good. Since there is only one God, who is good, and since marriage was created by that good God, it is also good. Irenaeus (fl. c. 180) employs the same argument in his refutation of the Gnostics. He accuses those who oppose the essential goodness of marriage of finding fault with the God "?who made male and female for the begetting of men.?" Already in the second century, in his apology for Christians, Justin (d. c. 165) had replied to Roman accusations about the sexual immorality of Christians by insisting that "?either we marry only to have children or, if we do not marry, we are continent always.?" But Clement goes much further, arguing that the only purpose for sexual intercourse is to beget a child and that any other purpose must be excluded. Origen (d. c. 254) agrees, arguing that the man who has sexual intercourse only with his wife, "?and only for the sake of children,?" is truly circumcised. Two Fathers left the Western church with a theology of marriage that controlled Christian thinking for centuries. The lesser one is Tertullian who, in a first book, To A Wife, exhibits the same ambivalence to sexuality and marriage that is evident in the early church. He grants that, in the beginning, marriage was necessary to populate the earth, but argues that when the end of the world is near there is no need for such activity. One might think that Tertullian has no time for marriage. In a second book under the same title, however, he writes the most beautiful lines on Christian marriage one could hope to find. "?What a bond is that of two faithful who are of one hope, one discipline, one service .… They are truly two in one body, and where there is one body there is also one spirit.?" One would think that between the first and second books, Tertullian had found a wonderful wife. One reaches in the writings of Augustine, the great bishop of Hippo (d. 430), insight into the nature of marriage that was to mold the doctrine of the Latin church down to our day. Augustine's basic statement about sexuality and marriage is ubiquitous, firm, and clear. Contrary to those heretics who hold that sexuality and marriage are evil, he insists that sexuality and marriage were created good by a good God, and cannot lose their intrinsic goodness. He specifies the good of marriage as threefold and teaches that even after the Fall the marriages of devout Christians still contain this threefold good: spousal fidelity, offspring, and sacrament, by which he means the indissolubility of marriage. Medieval Developments Two actions by Pope Stephen II in 751 symbolized changes underway for centuries in the Catholic church. He approved of the palace revolt of Pepin against the king of the Franks, and he invited Pepin to Italy to liberate it from the Lombards. In these actions, Roman ecclesial practices crossed into northern Europe as part of an emerging Holy Roman Catholic empire. A church that was originally Palestinian, then Graeco-Roman, became decisively European. There was, however, no corresponding change in the theology of marriage, for the theological method of the time was to collect the opinions of the Fathers and then comment upon them. In the year 850, therefore, the theology of marriage had not advanced beyond where Augustine left it in 430. Marriage is good because it was created by the good God. Divorce is not permitted, to say nothing of remarriage. Though marriage remained a secular institution and church participation in weddings was not required until the eleventh century, an old question continued to be raised: When is a marriage valid and, therefore, indissoluble? The ancient Roman answer was well-established: when it is initiated by free consent. The answer in the new Holy Roman empire, influenced by northern European customs, conflicted with that answer: The first act of sexual intercourse after the wedding makes marriage. Because these customs raised serious questions for a church committed to the proposition that a valid marriage was indissoluble, a definitive answer had to be found. It was found in a compromise suggested by the canonist Gratian in the middle of the twelfth century: Marriage is initiated by free consent, and it is consummated and made indissoluble by sexual intercourse following consent. Early scholastic theologians did not doubt that marriage was a sign of grace, only that it was a cause of grace. They hesitated, therefore, to include it among the sacraments of the church. The Dominicans Albert the Great (d. 1280) and Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) had no such doubts. In his commentary on Peter Lombard's theological textbook, Albert characterizes as "?very probable?" the opinion which holds that marriage "?confers grace for doing good … specifically that good a married person should do.?" In his commentary on the same textbook, Thomas asserts as "?most probable?" the opinion that "?marriage, in so far as it is contracted in faith in Christ, confers grace to do those things which are required in marriage.?" In the Summa Theologiae, he lists marriage among the seven sacraments with no doubt whatever and, by the time of the Protestant Reformation, theologians universally held that marriage was a sacrament. Marriage in the Reformation The theology of marriage offered by the Reformers was in contrast to the scholastic theology they despised. Marriage, Martin Luther (d. 1546) taught in the Babylonian Captivity (1520), was created by God as an institution of this world, not as a sacrament. It belongs under the jurisdiction of civil authority, not under that of the church which has taken it captive. Philipp Melanchthon (d. 1560), acknowledged as the theologian of the first Lutheran generation, confirms this antisacramental approach to marriage. In his commentary on article 13 of the Augsburg Confession (1530), he defines sacrament as a rite which has "?the command of God and to which the promise of grace has been added.?" Applying the Reformation principle of sola scriptura, "?Scripture alone,?" he then argues that there are only three such sacraments, "?baptism, the Lord's Supper, and absolution.?" John Calvin (d. 1564) follows the same line of argument in his dismissal of marriage as a sacrament. Marriage in the Twentieth Century Though they differ in the theological language they use about marriage, the contemporary churches agree that it is not only a social, but also a religious reality. They believe it places spouses in a context of grace. The Catholic traditions express this grace-context in their teaching on marriage as sacrament, that is, as a prophetic symbol in and through which the church proclaims and celebrates that presence of God in Christ known as grace. The Roman Catholic church distinguishes two dimensions of that sacrament. There is first the wedding ceremony, which ritualizes the free giving of consent by which two Christians establish a marriage. There is secondly the married life of the couple, which establishes their consent in a lifelong partnership of love. In ordinary language, both these actions are named marriage; in Catholic theological language, both are also named sacrament. The Orthodox tradition insists that, since marriage is a sacrament of the church, not a legal contract, the minister of the sacrament is the presiding priest. The Roman Catholic tradition, since it insists that marriage is a contract as well as a sacrament, insists that the minister of the sacrament is the contracting couple. The Roman tradition, based on its reading of Jesus' statements on divorce and remarriage, continues to discourage divorce and to prohibit remarriage in the church. The Orthodox tradition, based on its readings of the sayings of Jesus in the entire gospel story, accepts divorce and remarriage under certain circumstances. The liturgical ritual for a second marriage, however, is not the joyful ritual it is for a first marriage, but a ritual of sadness for the failure of the first marriage and of sorrow for any sin connected with that failure. Though John Calvin did not accept marriage as a sacrament, he did accept it as a sign of the covenant between Christ and the church. The Reformation traditions have followed him in this teaching, accepting marriage as a covenant. In this covenant, spouses commit themselves mutually to a life of intimate partnership in abiding love. They commit themselves to explore together the religious depths of their shared life and to respond to those depths in the light of their common Christian faith. They commit themselves to abide in covenant and in love and to withdraw from them only when their partnership has ceased to exist and when all available means to restore it have been exhausted. Though most Protestant traditions, on the basis of their understanding of the Gospels, now permit divorce and remarriage, no one should doubt that their theology of marriage as covenant and as a sign of the covenant between Christ and the church does situate marriage in the context of grace every bit as much as the Catholic theology of sacrament. Marriage, indeed, along with the family or the little church that proceeds from it, represent the high point of the Christian vocation.