Human Sexuality:
A Theological Perspective
(Part 2 of 4)
A Report of the
Commission on Theology and Church Relations
of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod
as prepared by its Social Concerns Committee
September 1981
II. Marriage and Its Purposes
The earthly estate of marriage is a divine institution. It is
therefore subject to certain divine requirements which remain in
effect until the close of this age regardless of the social
customs, civil laws, or ecclesiastical rites which may come to
surround it. That God Himself established marriage and pronounced
it good also means that He created it for the good of humanity. He
is at work in marriage to accomplish His purposes. In marriage
God intends to provide for (1) the relation of man and woman in
mutual love (Gen. 2:18); (2) the procreation of children (Gen.
1:28); and (3) the partial remedy for sinful lust (1 Cor. 7:2).
Both the fourth and sixth commandments presume and support these
purposes of marriage in human life.
A. Marriage
Marriage is the lifelong union of one man and one woman entered
into by mutual consent. It is ordinarily expected that this
consent and commitment will be public, that marriage is not a
merely personal decision but one which concerns all those who are
now to treat this man and woman as husband and wife. Although
marriage derives its validity from the commitment of a man and
woman to a permanent sharing of their lives, the institution of
marriage will normally be circumscribed by various civil laws
imposed by society. Even though the legal restrictions with which
our society surrounds marriage do not belong to the essence of
marriage,8 there is good reason to believe that they will
ordinarily serve human well-being -- a purpose for which God has
established civil authority (Rom. 13:4a). Such restrictions serve
the important social function of safeguarding rights of the spouse
and children. More important still, they may encourage thoughtful,
reflective commitment and thus protect the interest not only of
society but also of those who think they are in love. Unjustified
disregard for the legal requirements which have been established
by the state concerning marriage violates God's command for
obedience to the authorities He has placed over us.
The essence of marriage does not consist in legal requirements nor
in ecclesiastical ceremonies. To say otherwise would be to retract
the Biblical emphasis on marriage as a worldly or earthly
institution. Not the pronouncement of a minister but the consent
of the partners belongs to the essence of marriage. Indeed, not
until the fourth century A.D. is there even evidence of priestly
prayer and blessing in connection with the marriage of Christians.
It was felt to be entirely a secular act, though, of course, one
carried out -- like all acts -- "in the Lord."9 To say that marriage
is not primarily an ecclesiastical matter is not to say that it is
autonomous, however. Marriage remains a divine institution given
by God to His creatures to nourish their common life together and
to preserve human life toward the final goal of all creation.
While recognizing that marriage as a divinely ordained earthly
estate can be legitimately contracted in the civil realm,
Christian couples will ordinarily desire to make their vows in a
public worship service. In such a context they are able to hear
what the Word of God teaches concerning the sanctity of the
marriage bond and to permit fellow Christians to join them and
their families in asking God's blessings on their life together.
For such couples the ecclesiastical marriage rite is not the
church's way of making sacred something otherwise profane. Rather,
the church's act of consecration signifies that marriage is holy
because it is God-ordained and that it can be received with
thanksgiving (1 Tim. 4:5).
Sexual intercourse engaged in outside of the marriage relationship
is forbidden by the Scriptures and must be condemned by the church
(Gen. 2:24; 1 Thess. 4:2-5; cf. Gal. 5:19; Eph 5:3; Col. 3:5; 1
Cor. 6:16-20).10 This, of course, includes all casual sexual
relations, which are accepted practice in our society, and
arrangements whereby couples live together without being married.
Even when the partners feel themselves united by a deep bond of
love and intend to be married at some point in the future
("engagement"), the same judgment must be made.ll Where there is
no commitment to a complete, lifelong sharing of life in marriage,
sexual relations are contrary to God's will.
Because marriage is not essentially a legal or ecclesiastical
matter, it is possible, however, for a man and woman to give
themselves physically to each other, affirming to each other and
to the public their consent to share their future lives in a
permanent union, recognizing that their union might be fruitful
and to do this without a public ceremony. Such a relationship in
reality constitutes marriage (common-law marriage)l2 and cannot be
called fornication. While not a violation of the Sixth
Commandment, such a way of proceeding may involve an element of
deceit in that it implies that the individuals involved are living
in a single state, a condition which does not in fact exist and
which may cause offense to some. Moreover, this relationship sets
aside the regular societal safeguards which have been established
for the protection of the rights and interests of all the parties
involved, and in some states it is a violation of the legal
requirements for marriage.13
Christians hold to the principle that the Fourth Commandment
("Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother, that it may be well
with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth") must also be
applied to the estate of marriage. Accordingly, the blessing of
parents will ordinarily be sought. Christian couples, in keeping
with the Fourth Commandment's injunction that parents in all
things be honored and held in high esteem by their children, will
already have sought the blessing of their parents on their union
prior to the marriage ceremony. Such couples will therefore
recognize the appropriateness of inviting parents to declare their
blessings upon their union. Christians recognize that God's
blessings follow when those desiring to enter marriage seek the
advice and consent of parents on decisions of importance to a
wider circle of persons than themselves alone. God's order of
things concerning the family and civil order should not be
disparaged or ignored. "Be subject for the Lord's sake to every
human institution . . ." (1 Peter 2:13a)
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8 While "mutual consent" constitutes the essence of marriage,
there are certain conditions set forth in the Scriptures under
which proper consent cannot be given -- e.g., married persons
cannot give consent. Martin Chemnitz dealt with this question in
the following way: "'What God has joined together, let not man
put asunder.' But in order that it should be such an indissoluble
bond and inseparable union, it is necessary that it be a divine
union, that is, that it not be in conflict with the teaching of
the Word of God about the essence of marriage.... For instance, if
there is an impediment in the degrees either of consanguinity or
of affinity which God in His own Word Strictly prohibited; if a
person had another lawful wife beforehand; if the consent was not
freely and expressly given, if the kind of error with respect to
the person entered in which happened to Jacob with Leah; if a
person's nature is simply not fit for marriage, etc.... Moreover,
they do not separate a marriage that has been divinely joined, but
show that it is not a lawful or divine union" (Examination of the
Council of Trent, Part II, trans. Fred Kramer [St. Louis:
Concordia Publishing House, 1979], pp. 738 f.; italics ours).
9 For a discussion of the beginning of ecclesiastical
participation in marriage cf. E. Schillebeeckx, O. P., Marriage:
Human Reality, and Saving Mystery, trans. N. D. Smith (New York:
Sheed and Ward, 1965), pp. 244 ff. As a human institution a
wedding rite win normally provide(1) a reverent context for
announcement of the consent which is of the essence of marriage,
(2) for the giving of thanks and praise to God for the
institution of marriage, and (3) for the prayers of the
congregation that the marriage will be a God-pleasing and fruitful
one.
10 The Greek term porneia is used in the Scriptures (Septuagint
and the New Testament) to include the whole range of sexual
immorality, i.e. fornication (Matt. 15:19; Acts 15:20, 29; 1 Cor.
5:1; 6:18; Gen. 38:24; Lev. 18). Porneia is sometimes used in the
narrower sense of marital infidelity or adultery (Matt. 5:32;
15:19; 19:9; Lev. 20:10-11). The Scriptures categorically condemn
every form of fornication as sin against God (Lev. 18; 20:10-11; 1
Cor. 6:9-10, 18; Eph. 5:3; Col. 3:5).
11 The nature of commitment in the sequence of engagement and
marriage is a twofold one: The promises involved in engagement
(betrothal) are made with a view to the pledges given as part of
the marriage ceremony, where the promise to live together as one
flesh is given in public.
12 The usual requirements for a valid common-law marriage
recognized as legally binding in some states are: (1) an agreement
presently to be husband and wife; (2) living together as husband
and wife; and (3) holding each other out as husband and wife.
13 At the present time approximately a third of the U.S.A. states
legally recognize common-law marriages.
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B. The Purposes of Marriage
1. Mutual Love: The Relational Purpose of Marriage
The Bible, despite its quite natural preoccupation with other
concerns, is not oblivious to the awesome human significance of
the encounter between a man and a woman who give themselves fully
to each other in a "one flesh" union of love.l4 The relation
between husband and wife has a significance and meaning in and of
itself, distinct from any other purposes (such as procreation)
which their union may serve.
This relational aspect of marriage is emphasized in Genesis 2. The
beasts of the field, the birds of the air, every living creature
has been called forth by the creative Word of God. And then, as
the pinnacle of this creation, the man has been formed from the
dust of the ground. Obedient to his Creator, he names the animals,
placing each in its appropriate role beneath himself. But, we
read, "For the man there was not found a helper fit for him" (Gen.
2:20). No answer to the loneliness of the man had yet been given.
God himself had not yet announced His good pleasure. Against the
background of all the stately cadences in chapter 1 which had
pronounced the various aspects of creation "very good," we hear
now a different divine utterance. It is "not good" -- not good
that the man should be alone.
God therefore provides the woman as helpmeet. This means not
primarily one who will help the man as an assistant in his work.
Rather, the woman is "a helping being, in which, as soon as he
sees it, he may recognize himself."15 She is the mirror in which
the man will come to know himself as man. The man and woman have
been created toward fellowship, and neither can come to know the
self rightly apart from the other. The woman is given to the man
in order that neither of them may be alone, that together they
may know themselves in relation to one who is other than self.l6
Having created the woman, God brings her to the man, and he in
turn responds with those words which we have read rather too
solemnly: "At last!" At last, here is one who is "bone of my bone
and flesh of my flesh." This is an expression of "joyous
astonishment."17 It is Romeo's "O, she doth teach the torches to
burn bright!" -- uttered when he catches sight of Juliet.l8 The
predicament of the man's loneliness -- his "aloneness" -- has been
discerned and overcome by God's creative Word. A relation has been
established in which one may come to know oneself and the other in
a fellowship of love.
The union of husband and wife extends to the most intimate sharing
in the act of sexual intercourse. The complete physical sharing of
husband and wife is characterized by relaxation, enjoyment, and
freedom from guilt. Decisions relative to this physical sharing
should be made by husband and wife after prayerful discussion, as
they keep in mind always that mutual enjoyment of God's beautiful
gift is the goal they both seek (1 Thess. 4:4-5; 1 Cor. 7:5).
Couples need to remember that their physical commitments are
personal commitments. The act of intercourse is described in the
Bible as an act of knowing: "Adam Knew Eve his wife" (Gen. 4:1).
This is no mere euphemism; or, if it is, it has an uncanny
aptness. In the intimate sharing of the sexual act, a union in
which the self is naked before the other, a unique knowing takes
place. This is not knowledge about sex. It is knowledge of the
self and the other as sexual beings united with one another in
this most intimate union of giving and receiving.l9 The man and
the woman, two different beings, while retaining (even accenting)
their differences, nevertheless become one. The knowledge of that
fellowship -- like the knowledge of that fellowship in which God
"knows" those who are His -- can never be fully communicated apart
from the experience of the union itself. It can only be said that
in this union the partners come to know themselves even as they
know the other. They know themselves only "in relation" to each
other.
It is, of course, possible to forget that we are here talking of
mutual love and to imagine that nothing more than a satisfaction
of sexual appetite is involved. Clearly, however, though we might
settle for no more than that, to do so would be to fall short of
the personal relationship for which God has created us. The
satisfaction of appetite alone, apart from any commitment of love,
has not yet risen from the animal to the human, personal sphere.20
To view our sexuality in the context of a personal relationship of
mutual love and commitment in marriage helps us to evaluate the
practice of masturbation. Quite clearly, chronic masturbation
falls short of the Creator's intention for our use of the gift of
sexuality, namely, that our sexual drives should be oriented
toward communion with another person in the mutual love and
commitment of marriage. By its very nature masturbation separates
sexual satisfaction from the giving and receiving of sexual
intercourse in the marital union and is symptomatic of the
tendency of human beings to turn in upon themselves for the
satisfaction of their desires.
In childhood, masturbation may often be a form of temporary
experimentation. However, children of God are warned against the
voluntary indulgence of sexual fantasies as endangering faith and
spiritual life. Such inordinate desires are clearly called sin by
our Lord (Matt. 5:28). As the child grows and matures, youthful
lusts and fantasies (2 Tim. 2:22) are left behind.
For those who are troubled by guilt and who seek God's help in
overcoming problems in this area, pastors and Christian counselors
need to stand ready to offer Christ's forgiveness, remind them of
the power of the Holy Spirit to help them lead "a chaste and
decent life in word and deed," and hold before them the joys of
remaining faithful to what God's Word teaches about His intention
for the good gift of sexuality.
The satisfaction of sexual appetite does not necessarily involve a
personal relationship at all. At that level the man, for example,
need not be concerned with woman as woman, as a personal being who
calls him to fellowship, but simply with her physiological
functions and capacities. And at that level it is quite
understandable that people should regard their partners as
essentially interchangeable. C. S. Lewis has described the
situation quite well:
We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man
prowling the streets, that he "wants a woman." Strictly speaking, a
woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which
a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus.21
When the church condemns such a casual approach to sexual
encounters as contrary to the will of God, it does more than take
recourse in some special "religious" insight. It calls people back
to a realization of the human, personal significance of the sexual
act. A society in which casual sexual encounters and divorce
prevail is on its way to viewing sexual partners as
interchangeable. Its tendency is to dehumanize people and treat
them solely in terms of their sexual functions, abstracting such
functions from any content of personal significance. The
relationship of mutual love, one of the purposes for the
fulfillment of which the Creator ordains marriage, is something
very different. "Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but
one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable
fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure
she can give."22 And, indeed, lovers -- however fickle they may
prove to be at some future moment -- are genuinely captivated by
one another. They will quite naturally swear fidelity to each other.
They rightly recognize the immense human and personal significance
of the encounter with the beloved. It is this mutual love,
implanted by the Creator in His creatures, with its original
tendency toward permanent commitment, which marriage
institutionalizes and seeks to make permanent.23 Thus does the
Creator continue today to deal with the predicament of "aloneness"
within the human creation. He continues to give men and women to
each other in the one-flesh union of marriage.
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14 The frankly erotic quality of the Song of Songs is not a
frequently mentioned topic within the church. Yet it could and
should be. Consider the following comment of Stephen Sapp:
"Although God neither appears nor is mentioned in it (which makes
it 'secular' for us). For the sages he is not absent from the
Song, nor are his love and concern for his creatures unmanifested
in it. Rather they are clearly shown in the enjoyment and
pleasure (given by God to man in the creation) which the lovers
find in each other and in their surroundings" (Sexuality, the
Bible, and Science, p. 26).
15 C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old
Testament, vol. 1 trans. James Martin (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,
n d., reprinted by Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1971), p.86.
16 It is clear that Gen. 2:18-25 has reference not only to
marriage but to the broader male-female duality. Here, however, we
use it primarily to refer to marriage itself as the center of the
male-female relation. That this is justified, v. 24 makes evident.
17 Keil-Delitzsch. P. 90.
18 William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, I, v. 45.
19 Cf. Helmut Thielieke's fine discussion (The Ethics of Sex,
trans. John W. Doberstein [New York: Harper and Row, 1964], pp. 66
ff.) of the distinction between sexual knowledge and knowledge
about sex.
20 Thielieke, pp. 20-26.
21 C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt Brace and
Company, 1960), pp.134 f.
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2. Children: The Procreative Purpose of Marriage
Men and women are called out of their loneliness into the
fellowship of marriage. Yet, their union might now turn wholly
inward and become a purely self-serving one. This is not to be.
The union of the man and woman who in their embrace have excluded
all third parties is to be a fruitful union. They are privileged
to give life to future generations.
The Biblical injunction to "be fruitful and multiply" is to be
understood as a blessing as well as a command. It is one of God's
good gifts to His people, for procreation is an actual sharing in
God's ongoing creative activity. We may even speak of the blessing
as a kind of natural promise embedded within the creation: a sign
and manifestation of the truth that genuine love is lifegiving and
fruitful. Hence, in the Christian tradition the child has been
regarded as a blessing from God (Ps. 127:3-5; 128:3). A
willingness to give birth involves a willingness to align
ourselves -- in wonder, humility, and hope -- with that blessing
embedded in the order of creation itself.
The child reveals to the parents "the depth of their carnal unity.
He partakes of both. He is both one and the other, and he is this
at the same time."24 In marriage two different and separate
individuals are united without having their individuality
obliterated. As a result of God's creative power at work through
their union the child incarnate makes physical and represents in
the flesh -- the mystery of this union. With the birth of a child,
husband and wife come to share a common work. The birth of their
child is the public manifestation that this union of husband and
wife is not one which turns inward, concentrating solely upon
itself. Theirs is the task of raising the child up to become a
mature and responsible member of the human family. Moreover,
Christian parents have reason to look upon the birth of a child
from their union as an occasion to have this child brought into
the divine family and to nourish it as it grows to spiritual
maturity. They have God's promise that He desires to have their
child become an heir of eternal life and a member of His household
through Holy Baptism. Theirs is the high privilege of joining in
the common work of raising a child up in the knowledge of Jesus
Christ, whose forgiveness enables us to live together in unselfish
love toward each other.
Couples may, of course, remain childless either voluntarily or
involuntarily. From the Christian perspective, involuntary
childlessness need stand under no special stigma. While couples
who are involuntarily childless can find great comfort knowing
that the Child Jesus has come among us and that all Christians are
members of the one family He has created, nevertheless it is still
true that a childless couple may sorrow greatly at their inability
to bear children. This is perfectly understandable, since one of
the natural purposes of marriage has failed to come to fruition in
their union. We need not gloss over that fact. Indeed, we do well
to share their sorrow where we can.
However, we ought not characterize their union as "incomplete." To
do so would be to take back all that was said concerning the
relational purposes of marriage. It would be to forget the
profound significance of the one-flesh union. That union of
husband and wife has a full and sufficient meaning in itself, and
the joining of a man and woman in marriage should not be envisaged
merely as a means of reproduction. Furthermore, husband and wife,
even when childless, can still engage in a common work. Their
union need not turn inward solely upon itself. They can permit the
absence of children itself to be creative and fruitful in new ways
in their shared life. To be sure, it will take greater thought for
them to find some other work in which their oneness may incarnate
itself, but it is possible for them to do so. And, of course, they
may seek to adopt children. It would be hard to find anywhere in
our lives a more exact paradigm of agape (self-giving love) than
the love which will move people to become parents or to provide
foster care for those children who for a variety of reasons are
without a family to provide for them. To offer such love is a
special blessing and opportunity available to the childless
couple.
In view of the Biblical command and the blessing to "be fruitful
and multiply," it is to be expected that marriage will not
ordinarily be voluntarily childless. But, in the absence of
Scriptural prohibition, there need be no objection to
contraception within a marital union which is, as a whole,
fruitful.25 Moreover, once we grant the appropriateness of
contraception, we will also recognize that sterilization may
under some circumstances be an acceptable form of contraception.
Because of its relatively permanent nature, sterilization is
perhaps less desirable than less-far-reaching forms of
contraception. However, there should be no moral objection to it,
especially for couples who already have children and who now seek
to devote themselves to the rearing of those children, for those
who have been advised by a physician that the birth of another
child would be hazardous to the health of the mother, or for those
who for reasons of age, physical disability, or illness are not
able to care for additional children. Indeed, there may be special
circumstances which would persuade a Christian husband and wife
that it would be more responsible and helpful to all concerned,
under God, not to have children. Whatever the particular
circumstances, Christians dare not take lightly decisions in this
area of their life together. They should examine their motives
thoroughly and honestly and take care lest their decisions be
informed by a desire merely to satisfy selfish interests.
With respect to voluntary childlessness in general, we should say
that while there may be special reasons which would persuade a
Christian husband and wife to limit the size of their family, they
should remember at all times how easy it is for them simply to
permit their union to turn inward and refuse to take up the task
of sharing in God's creative activity. Certainly Christians will
not give as a reason for childlessness the sorry state of the
world and the fear of bringing a child into such a world. We are
not to forget the natural promise embedded in the fruitfulness of
marriage. To bear and rear children can be done, finally, as an
act of faith and hope in the God who has promised to supply us
with all that we "need to support this body and life."
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22 Ibid., p. 135.
23 We have, of course, described marriage as we in our culture
ordinarily experience it. It is equally possible that it might not
be preceded by mutual love (e.g., marriages might be arranged by
parents), but the institution of marriage would still be ordered
toward such a relationship of mutual love, and we would expect it
to give rise to this love.
24 Robert Mehl, Society and Love: Ethical Problems of Family Life,
trans. James H. Farley (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press,
1964), p. 46.
25 The ease of contraception has been the cause of considerable
disagreement within Christendom. The position and the problems of
the Roman Catholic Church with respect to this matter have been
well publicized, though perhaps not well understood. The teaching
of Pope Paul VI in Humanae vitae itself largely a rearticulation
of the traditional Catholic position, is that "each and every
marriage act must remain open to the transmission of
life"(Humanae vitae [New York: Paulist Press. 1968,par. 11]).(We
might note that, technically, an encyclical is not held to be
infallible teaching. From the Catholic perspective the pope here
speaks, of course, with great authority, but he does not utter
infallible teaching.) Catholic teaching recognizes both the
relational and the procreative purposes of marriage and affirms
that both are to be fulfilled within marriage. Its position on
birth control derives from its insistence that no single act of
sexual intercourse can seek to enhance one of these purposes (the
relational) while deliberately frustrating the realization of the
other (the procreative). It is not enough, according to this
teaching, for the marital union of husband and wife as a whole to
be fruitful. Rather, every act of intercourse must place no
artificial impediment in the way of fruitfulness. From what the
Scriptures say about the threefold purpose of marriage, we could
judge that such a viewpoint isolates the sexual act from its
human, personal context and focuses too narrowly on the
procreative function apart from the personal context. This is, in
fact, a judgment shared by many contemporary Roman Catholic moral
theologians.
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3. Restraint of Sin: The Healing Purpose of Marriage
Marriage as we experience it is not an idyllic order set in an
unfallen world. There is nothing sinful about our sexuality per
se, but our sexuality, like all aspects of our lives, has been
disordered as a result of sin. Appetite uncontrolled by mutual
love constantly threatens to break out in disruptive ways in our
lives. Love itself can become a god to be pursued at all costs,
even at the cost of broken promises and unfaithfulness to those to
whom we have committed ourselves. Because sin permeates the whole
of our lives, it threatens to distort our sexual experience.
Christian teaching has therefore stressed that the Creator
graciously uses marriage as an order by which He preserves human
life and disciplines human beings as He works out His plan to make
them a part of that redeemed community which He is preparing in
His Son. This point has crystallized itself in many people's minds
in the words of St. Paul's injunction that "it is better to marry
than to be aflame with passion" ( 1 Cor. 7:9). Or, as Paul writes
a few verses earlier in that same chapter, "because of the
temptation to immorality, each man should have his own wife and
each woman her own husband" (v. 2).
Sexual appetites need to be controlled and disciplined. Marriage
functions under God's ordinance to domesticate our passion and
channel it in ways which, to some extent, bring it back into
accord with the Creator's order. Within marriage sexual passion is
committed to fidelity even if conditions should change for the
worse and fidelity seem less attractive than it once did. Marriage
becomes then, under God's goodness, a place of remedy. Our
untameable appetites and romantic impulses are here brought down
from their lofty pretensions to earth and bound to the good of one
other person. Lovers are quick to promise faithfulness, and, as we
have said, they are right to do so. To keep those promises is more
difficult. Marriage as an institution is used by God to foster and
enrich our commitment to the needs of others, to teach us the
extent to which love must be committed if it is truly to be love.
There may be, it is true, marriages in which such contented
commitment never fully develops. Even then, however, a kind of
healing can take place when there is steadfast determination to
honor the Creator and the partner He has given.
Precisely because marriage is intended to help us control our
sexual desires, there can be no such thing as a trial marriage.
Continued commitment to a marital union is not to depend on what
our desires and wishes may be at any given time. Instead, the
institution of marriage and the commitment to which it binds us
should serve to discipline and shape our desires. These desires,
permeated by sin, need to be controlled. Marriage is not simply to
be evaluated by our wishes. These wishes must also be shaped by
marriage.
It is all too easy to misunderstand the teaching that "it is
better to marry than to be aflame with passion." This can come to
sound like a recommendation to do with one man or woman what we
would really like to do with many -- and to think that in so doing
we act correctly. With such a view marriage becomes an essentially
self-serving device. But those who can find no more than this in
Paul's advice have not yet begun to penetrate to this deeper
concern. Marriage is not a restraint of sin merely in the sense
that it permits each person to satisfy his instincts in a socially
approved context. It is a restraint of sin -- a place of remedy --in
that it provides the possibility for husband and wife to serve the
needs of each other. In their sinful condition the husband and
wife are able to serve each other's passionate needs and to offer
their loving support to one another. By so complementing one
another, husband and wife join in the task of bringing their lives
into accord with the divine intention for human desire.26
Within marriage passion is also ordered toward the procreation
and rearing of children. We should not overlook the sense in which
not only the marital union itself but also the family is a place
designed to help us in our weakness. Gabriel Marcel has written
that "a family is not created or maintained as an entity without
the exercise of a fundamental generosity. . . ."27 To give birth,
jointly to nourish and sustain that life to which they have given
birth --all this is the common work of husband and wife. And it is
an act of self-spending which can only be compared to a gift. It
implies a certain fundamental generosity, a willingness to spend
one's time and energy, one's person, in nourishing and-sustaining
a new life. Thus the family is not only an institution in which
parents raise their children to maturity. It is also a place in
which God is at work shaping and molding the parents themselves.
The family as an institution will not flourish unless the
self-interested impulses of the parents are controlled and,
sometimes, broken. In this way, too, marriage is a place of
healing, shaping its participants for a life in common and
providing them with a place where they can delight in the acts of
self-giving which all genuine community requires.
Real healing takes place in marriage not merely when sin is
restrained, but when husband and wife love each other as Christ
loved them and "gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and
sacrifice to God" (Eph. 5:2). That is to say, sin is not only
curbed, but it is forgiven in the name of Christ and so is daily
removed as the destructive force which separates people from each
other. Christian couples need to remember that the controlling
principle of the new life in God's redeemed community works
genuine healing also in the marital union and in the family
circle: ". . . and be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you" (Eph. 4:32).
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26 We must, in this connection, add the observation that many
marital unions offer healing in quite another, almost
paradoxical, sense. Serious illness may afflict one of the
partners; or professional responsibilities may make it necessary
for one of the spouses to be absent from home for longer periods
of time. Such situations call for the discipline of continence.
That is to say, personal fulfillment is found at a moral and
spiritual level quite apart from the opportunity of partners in
marriage giving themselves to each other in sexual intercourse.
Experiences of this kind fall under the category of bearing one's
cross of discipleship. No less than the power of the Holy Spirit
is available to married partners under circumstances of this
kind. In fact, they have been given the specific promise: "God is
faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your
strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of
escape, that you may be able to endure it" (l Cor. 10:13).
27 Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of
Hope, trans. Emma Crauford (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962), p.
87.
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Walther Library
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