Thoughts

Harakas pp225-258; Patitsas: “The Marriage of Priests”; R.B. Hays: “Divorce and Remarriage”; R. Dreher “Orthodoxy and Me”; Advertisement

“Marriage can never be seen as ephemeral; rather, it figures forth the ultimate redemptive intention of God.”[1]

If there is one thing that can be said of marriage and sexual purity, it is that the meaning and significance thereof go far, far deeper than it would at first seem[2]. Harakas compares modern faithlessness with the unfaithfulness of ancient Israel (p225ff): the prophet Hosea is even instructed by God to marry a prostitute to symbolize Israel’s unfaithfulness to her God (Hos. 1:2-3). Sexual purity is an important preparation for marriage according to Harakas (p235). This, along with the ascetical self-sacrificial love required in marriage, implies the offering of oneself to one’s spouse as an unblemished sacrifice (and the collective offering of the married couple as an unblemished sacrifice for their children). Not only society, but even epistemology itself is related to the issue as knowing-as-communion in a pre-fall sense becomes knowing as objectified knowledge after the fruit is taken for its own sake (Patitsas p82).

Harakas points out that along with the most common path, marriage, the church also blesses the path of virginity in monasticism, and that there will also be those who live celibate lives outside of monasteries. The difference here is a looser bond of community – in marriage, spouses are bound together by sacrificial love and mutual submission; in monasticism, monastics are bound together in mutual submission and obedience to their abbot; even in Jon Chrysostom’s church community in Constantinople, widows and virgins were perhaps organized into their own communities (or at least, their care was specifically considered by the church). Yet today, those who are living celibate lives ‘in the world’ are generally left without any particular support. This could be one reason for the cataclysmic events in the Roman Catholic Church as described by Rod Dreher[3]. The Church hierarchy’s response was shame: to cover up rather than to confess and repent.

The abuse scandal is just one aspect of the systemic collapse of all understandings of both meaning and virtue in matters relating to sexuality, gender and marriage. Even the advertising industry plays its role here – both in living out the collapse and also in highlighting it: the advertising messages which “make us feel as if we have an intimate, even passionate relationship with a product”[4] note the brokenness of most intimate relationships and attempt to salve that wound with materialism and consumerism.

Matters of sexual purity, ‘gender’ and marriage were mostly taken for granted in the past, so that while Scripture and Tradition address issues of virtue in these areas, more basic concepts are often taken for granted, or built on foundations which are themselves challenged today. Hence “The Marriage of Priests” article attempts to express a basic hermeneutic for understanding the meaning of ‘gender’[5]. Evdokimov[6] uses the Theotokos and John the Baptist as archetypes for woman and man, but somewhat unconvincingly, especially because of the way the Theotokos is a model not only for women but also for men in both her humble, self-sacrificial submission to God and her designation as ‘invincible General’. Soloviev[7] is concerned to point out the feminine aspects in man and the masculine aspects in woman, which somehow answer each other in the coming together of man and woman as well as the more instinctively felt masculine in man meeting the feminine in woman. However his attempt to resolve this through an overly romantic vision of sexless love is also ultimately unconvincing. This article, with the beautiful method of maintaining proper distinction without setting up abrupt separation between man and woman through the use of the sequence of priest and prophet/king or king/prophet, makes a far more compelling case for the archetypal nature of these two saints.

The way in which Christ is the salvation of all mankind, male and female, is also better described through seeing the ‘new Eve’ as completed not primarily in the Theotokos, but in Christ – and in the Theotokos inasmuch as she is the bearer of Christ. Uniting the vocation of men and women in the priestly vocation is also a clear fulfilment of the image of God in all people, as well as showing the mutual self-sacrifice required in marriage. Seeing the fall as a break in the communion (an act of infidelity) with God that communion between people depends on also relates closely the fall to the unfaithfulness of Israel which is overcome in the perfect marriage of Christ with his Church. And the break in this communion seen as objectification brings us back to the modern condition of broken communion when intimacy is sought in materialism and commercialism (even as it pertains to sexual relationships, where the ‘knowing’ in a pre-fall sense of communion is lost in an unconnected sexual act).

Christian marriage as an icon of the union of Christ with his Church (which is his very body) is beautifully illustrated by the summary of Christ-like masculinity in the words of St Silouan “All these will be saved, only I shall be lost” and Christ-like (Church-like) femininity as “I don’t know anything – that I might know Someone”[8].

[1] “Divorce and Remarriage” p304

[2] Note the connection between marriage and society in terms of faithfulness and relations of self-sacrifice; Rod Dreher notes that “the sex-abuse scandal can’t be easily separated from the wider crisis in the American Catholic Church”; Harakas notes the negative effects both of society on the family and of the debasement of family on society (pp226-229).

[3] There is also the issue of ‘filioquist’ ecclesiology and mediaeval hierarchical understandings: the church dispenses the sacraments to the people and the people are responsible to the church which rules over them. Hence Rod Dreher is criticized for not giving unquestioning trust and obedience to the hierarchy, and the hierarchy protects the clergy rather than the innocent victims. (Though it is not for non-Catholics to be complacent, since this kind of self-justification and desire for self-preservation goes with power in any human institution; and in any case where proper humility and self-sacrifice is lost, the church becomes a human institution.)

[4] Blurb for Jean Kilbourne’s book on advertising

[5] I can’t bring myself to remove the inverted commas: I know ‘gender’ is now almost universally used as synonymous with (or at least instead of) the more traditional ‘sex’ – the revisionist agenda supported by the squeamishness of so-called ‘conservatives’, but the topic of vocabulary alone here is huge in terms of the validity or not of ‘gender identity’ as separate from biological sex, the significance of biology, a gestalt concept of self-construction versus a Christian concept of theosis or some kind of demonic ‘ungrowth’, etc, etc.

[6] Woman and the Salvation of the World

[7] The Meaning of Love

[8] “Marriage of Priests” p96.

By the way, I also like the way this defuses the critique of some of the revisionist writers on sexuality such as Elizabeth Stuart and Michael Vasey by speaking of the “inner as well as mutual integration” and the

“gender-reversing calling” showing how to escape the ‘ersatz masculine/feminine’ (which Leanne Payne speaks of) without needing the ‘social critique’ of the so-called ‘queer’ sexualities.

Also, the idea of the Eucharistic priestly ministry as being too well-suited to the feminine might explain St Paul’s requirement of head coverings for women.

This section of Matthew’s gospel contains a second account of Jesus’s teaching on marriage. The broad context here is that of responses to Christ in unbelief and belief from the doubts raised by John the Baptist (11:1-19) to the judgement on those who could not recognise him in the poor and needy (25:31-46). It immediately follows the fourth discourse on life in the church as life in the Kingdom, and precedes teaching about the coming of the Kingdom in the context of the passion and resurrection of Christ and his return. Teaching on marriage and celibacy is an interesting bridge between the two. There are parallels to this teaching earlier in Matthew (5:31-32) in the context of the Sermon on the Mount teaching about life in the Kingdom. The parallels in Mark (10:2-12) and Luke (16:18) do not give the exception for ‘πορνεια’ that Matthew provides (19:9 and 5:32).

Green contrasts Judaic theory and practice on marriage (p201-202), noting that the significance and permanence on marriage is clear from Creation, and yet the exception granted by Moses had been extended by some Jewish teachers to a quite liberal degree. He also notes (p203) that God had also said ‘I hate divorce’ (Mal. 2:16).

Green suggests that here the Pharisees were attempting to trick Jesus to take one or another side in the Jewish controversy on the legalities involved in divorce. John Chrysostom suggests that, knowing what Jesus had previously said in strengthening the Law on marriage (Mt 5:31-32), they hoped to catch him contradicting either himself or the Law (LXII:1). But here Jesus responds by quoting Scripture (even, as Green notes, attributing the words of Genesis to ‘the Creator’, p202). The strength of his statement, “what God hath joined together…” and “one flesh”, indicates the seriousness with which God views marriage and the intention that it be a permanent state. Chrysostom notes the continuity with old covenant (LXII:2) in Jesus’s words, noting also how Jesus turns the criticism back on the Pharisees – “for the hardness of your hearts”. This is a common way for Jesus to respond to the Pharisees (e.g. 9:11-13, 12:1-14, 15:1-20). Having stated the law of God, Jesus then gives the law with own authority (as he had also done in previous similar cases, e.g. 5:21-48, 15:10-11). Likewise, again as before (e.g. 9:14, 15:12-20), the disciples ask for clarification on this ‘hard saying’.

The interpretation of 19:11 is also difficult: what is “this saying” – his, or the disciples’? Does this mean that accepting marriage on such terms is hard, and there are those, like the eunuchs, who cannot accept it? Or does it mean that accepting celibacy is hard, but it is given to some, as for the eunuchs, to accept it. Green is ambiguous (p203). Chrysostom understands the second (LVII:3), commenting that the disciples are suggesting celibacy is easier, but Jesus that it is hard; but by seeing the difficulty of marriage they might be encouraged to celibacy (since, like the eunuchs, they will be able to endure it). With regard to the eunuchs, Chrysostom speaks strongly against self-mutilation (even comparing it to murder), and says that “eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake” (19:12) are those who have put away wicked thoughts. He further comments that Jesus’s saying “he who is able to accept it…” means that this teaching about marriage and celibacy is not “shut up in the compulsion of a law” (LVII:3) but that each is called to live out the Kingdom life in the way appropriate to his circumstances. Whichever saying Jesus is referring to, what is clear is that neither marriage nor celibacy is to be a universal rule; both are roads that can lead to the Kingdom, as long as they are lived out in the context of a Kingdom life.

As for the contradiction between Matthew’s account and the parallels in Mark and Luke, one possible explanation is that Matthew’s concern for continuity with the old covenant has caused him to add Moses’s ‘divorce clause’ to Jesus’s saying (Matthew makes an exception for ‘πορνεια’ which means some kind of unlawful sexual behaviour[1], similar to Moses’s exception for a husband to divorce if ‘ευρεν εν αυτη ασχημον πραγμα’ – if he found in her a shameless deed – Deut 24:1 LXX). However Green (p204-5) has an intriguing and plausible way of dealing with it. After discussing the problems of interpreting exactly what the word ‘πορνεια’ means, and the context of the exception, he explains that Jesus was not legislating here but is demonstrating the ideal of marriage, which in the life of the Kingdom and in the purposes of Creation was to be a permanent union. Green suggests that here, Matthew was turning this teaching into a law, and “as soon as you have legislation, you need exceptions to cover hard cases”. In other words, it is clear from Jesus’s teaching what marriage should be, but there is room for economia in specific difficult cases.

[1] Bauer’s Lexicon.