The lively and lengthy debates recently raised in the "Religious and Philosophical Society" concerning the Christian teaching on the Sacrament of Marriage, and the various views expressed here by supporters and defenders of the various views on this subject, testify to two indisputable facts: 1) that the question raised is not an idle and accidental question, but one of essential importance in its moral and practical significance for a Christian, and 2) that in the consciousness of a believing Christian, two apparently mutually exclusive teachings of the Church cannot be accommodated - on married life, sanctified by the grace of God in a special Sacrament, on the one hand, and on perfect virginity, on the dominion of the spiritual nature over the sensual, as the ultimate goal of human life, on the other. The modernity and importance of the question raised prompts us to contribute to its clarification to the extent of our understanding. We do not undertake the task of answering all the perplexities that have arisen and may arise concerning this subject. The purpose of this article is to clarify the marriage union of a man and a woman from the point of view of a holistic Christian worldview and to answer only those questions that are of particular importance in our eyes.
The following questions naturally arise in the mind of a Christian: how should we look at the carnal side of marriage – is it pure in the moral sense, or is it impure? If it is pure, then why is the carnal union of a man and a woman and the marriage union without the blessing of the Church considered reprehensible and shameful? If it is impure, then how does the grace of God, communicated in the Sacrament, make the impure pure, and would it not be blasphemous to attribute such an action to Divine grace? If Christian marriage is holy in this sense, in the sense of the carnal union of the spouses, then in what relation will the marital state of a Christian, in its moral height, be to the state of virginity? Let us try to answer the first of the questions we have posed: its solution will predetermine all the others.
Turning to the word of God, we find here data for an answer to it, both in the positive and negative sense. The writer of Genesis narrates that it pleased God to produce the human race not from one person, and not from two of the same sex, but from a man and a woman, therefore, to create sexual differences between beings of the same nature. He further narrates that, introducing the first people into paradise, God gave them a blessing: increase and multiply ( Gen. 1:28 ); He repeated the same blessing later to Noah and his sons after the flood ( Gen. 9:1 ); Jesus Christ , the incarnate Son of God, was present at the wedding in Cana of Galilee ( John 2:1-11 ); to the question of the Pharisees: is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every fault? – confirmed the original law of marriage, laid down by the Creator in the nature of man: Have you not thought that He who created them from the beginning created them male and female?… What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder ( Matthew 19:4, 6 ). There is no doubt that if married life were not pleasing to God, then God would not have created sexual differences between people, Jesus Christ would not have been present at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, and He would not have confirmed the Old Testament law on marriage… On the other hand, the word of God runs through like a living thread and is everywhere presupposed the idea that a person must restrain his sensual impulses and give preference to higher, spiritual aspirations over them, monogamy is legalized and fornication and adultery are prosecuted under threat of death; The Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the highest example of morality, was free from all sexual movements, although nothing human, except sin, was alien to Him, and in His teaching He recognizes the virginal state, in its moral height, as not accessible to everyone; the holy Apostle Paul advises the Corinthian Christians to have a wife (only) to avoid fornication... Based on these testimonies, the words of God conclude that the sensual side of marriage is impure, and therefore not pleasing to God.
These are two extreme views on the same subject. Both views have the above-mentioned evidence from the word of God in their favor; but both must be recognized as equally unconvincing, for neither one nor the other, while claiming to be correct, can prove why it considers the other, which is also based on the word of God, to be incorrect. It seems to us that the more correct and convincing opinion will be that of those who will combine these two extreme understandings and will assert, together with the first, that the marital union of a man and a woman is pleasing to God, since the propagation of the human race by means of marriage was pleasing to God, and with the second, that sensuality, since it manifests itself in the marital union, is not pleasing to Him - in other words, marriage is pleasing, but not such as we observe in life, but one completely alien to passionate manifestations. A conclusion that is, at first glance, paradoxical, but upon closer examination of the marital union in connection with the general Christian worldview, has certain data in its favor and a certain degree of persuasiveness. It will seem strange to those who are convinced only by the data of external experience, who deny the action of a supernatural factor in world life. But it is not for such readers that we are writing our article; for a believer who recognizes the present state of human life as abnormal, it will not be at all surprising that what is normal and natural for man in his present state we recognize as abnormal for an innocent man who was in a state of primitive righteousness - it will not seem strange if we say that for the first people, in their state of innocence, a special marital union was possible, completely alien to passion, that such and such a marriage was pleasing to God from the beginning. No one who recognizes the divinely revealed teaching will assert that illness and suffering in humanity, and consequently childbearing, accompanied by the pangs of birth, are normal and natural in the human race, that precisely such a reproduction of humanity was blessed by God in the beginning; Anyone reading in the Bible about the immediate consequences of the fall of the first parents will see that painful childbearing was determined for the wife by the righteous judgment of God after the fall of man. Telling people the natural and inevitable consequences of their fall (disobedience to God and turning from spiritual to sensual things), God says to the wife: I will greatly multiply thy sorrows and thy sighs: in pain shalt thou bring forth children ( Gen. 3:16). Doesn't this indicate that in an innocent state, birth and conception were possible for people in a special, painless way? And that, indeed, a woman could give birth painlessly and dispassionately before her fall, does not the only event in the history of mankind - the painless and dispassionate birth of the Divine Child from the Most Holy Virgin, pre-purified by the Holy Spirit - serve as some proof of this? - We answer in the affirmative. Such a resolution of the question we are discussing, not presenting anything inconsistent with reason for a believing Christian and being completely in accordance with the word of God, is entirely based on patristic reasoning.
St. Gregory of Nyssa , having quoted the words of the Savior: For in the resurrection they neither marry nor marry ( Matt. 22:80 ), nor can they die any more: for they are equal with the angels, and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection ( Luke 20:36 ), continues:
The gift of resurrection promises us nothing other than the restoration of the fallen to their original state... Therefore, if the life of those who are restored has an affinity with the life of the Angels, then it is obvious that life before disobedience was somewhat angelic, i.e. unmarried. If people had not fallen, then for their reproduction they would not have needed marriage...: Fallen man in the matter of reproduction "was joined to the senseless beasts and became like them" ( Ps. 48:21 ) (Works of St. Gregory of Nyssa . Vol. I. CC. 146-147).
The same thing, only even more definitely, is testified by St. John Chrysostom .
“Ten thousand times ten thousand angels,” he says, “serve God, and thousands of thousands of archangels stand before Him” ( Dan. 7:10 ), and not one of them came by succession, from birth, the pains of childbearing and conception… God could even more have created people without marriage, as He created the first, from whom all people came. And now it is not the power of marriage that multiplies our race, but the word of the Lord, spoken in the beginning: “become fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” ( Gen. 1:28 ). Tell me, did marriage help Abraham in having children? Did he not say after so many years of marriage: “Lord? What do you give me? But I am sent away childless” ( Gen. 15:2 ). Therefore, as then in the dead bodies (of Abraham and Sarah) God arranged the source and root of so many thousands of people, so in the beginning, if Adam and Eve, obeying His commandment, had refrained from enjoying the tree (of knowledge of good and evil), there would have been no lack of means to multiply the human race. Neither marriage, without God's permission, can increase the number of existing people, nor can virginity harm their multiplication, when He wishes that there should be many of them, but God has deigned so, as Scripture says, because of us and because of our disobedience (Works of St. John Chrysostom . 1885. Vol. I. Part I. P. 304).
While affirming the fact that the first people, in their blessed state, could reproduce without marriage, the aforementioned Fathers of the Church do not, however, clarify how such reproduction was possible: St. Gregory of Nyssa points only to the higher bodily organization of the first man, and St. John Chrysostom to the miraculous power of the Divine blessing. A definite and quite convincing answer to this question is given by Blessed Augustine .
Although at the present time people, not having a true concept of the blessed state in paradise, do not imagine that it is possible to give birth to children otherwise than as they know it from experience, i.e. through lust, nevertheless we should not think that what God said in His blessing: “Increase and multiply and fill the earth” ( Gen. 9:1 ), the spouses who lived in paradise had to fulfill through this lust… After sin this lust appeared: after sin, when the power to which the body obeyed in all its parts was lost, nature, which had not lost its shame, felt it, paid attention to it, was ashamed of it, covered it up (Works of Blessed Augustine . On the City of God. XIV, 21).
It must not seem incredible that the birth of children could, without the aforementioned lust, be subject to the will to which so many members are now subject (Works of Blessed Augustine . On the City of God. XIV, 23). The flesh went out of obedience to man as a result of his disobedience to God.
From all the patristic reasoning cited, we draw the conclusion that the sensual side of marriage, insofar as it serves as a manifestation of passion, is an abnormal phenomenon that appeared as a result of the fall of man and along with him; it became normal and natural after the fall, when man introduced a new law into his nature, different from the law according to which he was supposed to live according to the idea of his Creator and hostile to this law ( Rom. 7:21-23 ). The Creator, having granted free will to His rational creation, by virtue of this did not and could not destroy the change introduced by man into his nature: He recognized the appearance of lust in the marital relations of fallen people as just as natural as the very sinfulness of the human race; and just as for the sake of the latter the Creator decided not to destroy His creation, so He also recognized the human innovation in married life as an accomplished fact: And the Lord God , when he considered it, said, I will no more add to the curse of the ground for the works of men: for the thought of man hath diligently aimed at evil from his youth: therefore I will no more add to the smiting of all living flesh, as I have done. And God blessed Noah and his sons; and said unto them, Increase, and multiply, and replenish the earth ( Gen. 8:21; 9:1 ). It was necessary that the lust generated by man's freedom should also be freely cast out, so that man, having voluntarily shown preference for sensual pleasures over spiritual ones, should voluntarily renounce them for the sake of the interests of his spiritual nature. And this could only be accomplished through the complete restoration of human nature and in no other way than through the union of human nature with Divine nature in one Person of the God-man.
A person who had acquired a taste for sensual pleasures became their complete slave, and forgot more and more about spiritual blessings. To demand from a person in such a state the complete suppression of sensuality would be equivalent to demanding holiness from a sinful nature or health from a sick organism, and therefore it is natural that we do not find in the Old Testament even a word about a virginal life. God blessed the marriage union of the Old Testament man because the time demanded it, when nature was raging and could not withstand the onslaught of passions, and had no other haven for refuge in such a storm. And what else should have been commanded? To spend life in abstinence and virginity? But from this a graver fall would have occurred and the flame of passions would have become more intense… Therefore virginity was not taught in the beginning: or rather, virginity appeared to us in the beginning and before marriage, and later, for the reasons explained, marriage occurred and began to be considered necessary, although there would have been no need for it if Adam had remained obedient (St. John Chrysostom . T. I. Part I. SS. 306–307). Thus, marriage is given for the purpose of procreation, and even more for the extinguishing of the natural flame ... However, the Old Testament Jew was given to understand that he must limit his sensual desires (St. John Chrysostom . Vol. I. Part I. SS. 306-307), that although the increase of the chosen people is pleasing to God, it is not pleasing to God that a Jew enter into a marriage union with many women for this purpose: monogamy was a completely legal form of married life in Jewish society; fornication and adultery were punishable by death.
Forbidding through Moses the cohabitation of close relatives as a shameful thing ( Lev. 18:7-18 ), the Lord says: And you shall not give any of your seed to lie with your neighbor's wife, to defile yourself with her. And you shall not give any of your seed to serve Molech ( Lev. 18:20, 21 ). Whoever gives any of his seed to Molech shall surely die: the people of the land shall stone him with stones ( Lev . 20:2 ).
This was the meaning of the marriage union of the Old Testament man and woman. What new things were introduced into the marriage relationship by the Christian religion?
Christ the Savior, the second Adam, restored human nature in His Person and destroyed the disorder introduced into it by the sin of the first Adam. If all the followers of Christ had fully assimilated the redemptive merits of the Son of God, then either there would have been universal virginity, or the marital union of man and woman in Christian society would have become as alien to sensuality and passion as was the union of the first people in their state of innocence. In reality, we do not know and cannot even imagine such a union; the reason for this is that even the New Testament humanity, and even in its best representatives, has stood and stands far from the ideal Person of Christ. In order to assimilate the work of Christ and make it the property of his personality, every follower of Christ must himself, consciously and freely, crucify his flesh with passions and lusts, and this is not an easy task even for the most perfect Christian: the spiritual powers of man were restored by Christ, but the sinful inclination was not destroyed, and in the reborn man there is always a struggle between the old and the new man, with constant falls and rebellions. Therefore, the Lawgiver of the New Testament, although he speaks of the possibility of a virginal state, and places it above marriage, does not make it obligatory for all His followers: only he who is able to accommodate this, he "to whom it is given" from above, must be free from the bonds of marriage, and he who is not given, must live, in order to avoid fornication, a married life. The marriage union, as a means of curbing the passions and abstinence of the flesh, was pleasing to Christ, otherwise we could not understand and explain either His presence at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, or His confirmation of the Old Testament marriage union. Christ did not abolish the Old Testament marriage; He only limits the hard-heartedness and sensuality characteristic of the Old Testament man, and explains that marriage is not only a carnal union of man and woman, but also a spiritual one, and as such it must be indissoluble. When the Pharisees asked Him: Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every fault? – and they pointed to Moses, who commanded to put away a wife and give her a book of licentiousness, – the Lord said: Moses because of the hardness of your hearts commanded you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so ( Matt. 19:3–8 ), therefore whoever puts away his wife, except for the word of adultery, and marries another, commits adultery ( Matt. 19:9 ). Such a word of Christ seemed difficult even to His disciples, and they noted: if such is the duty of a man to his wife, then it is better not to marry ( Matt. 19:10); this is how it would be for all followers of Christ, if a Christian were not given in the Sacraments, and in particular in the Sacrament of Marriage, gracious help from above, spiritualizing the marriage union in the image of the union of Christ with the Church and giving the newlyweds the strength to spend their married life in the Lord, and not according to lust.
The Holy Apostles, the faithful disciples of Christ and interpreters of His Divine teaching, look at marital relations according to the instructions of their Teacher. To be convinced of this, it is enough to open the Epistles of St. Apostle Paul. The will of God , writes the Apostle to the Thessalonians, is your sanctification, that ye abstain from fornication; that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in holiness unto honor, and not in the passion of lust, as do the Gentiles which know not God ( 1 Thess. 4:3-5 ). The Apostle does not legitimize virginity, because he has no such command from the Lord, but he recognizes the state of virginity as higher than marital. It is good for a man not to touch a woman: but for fornication's sake (to avoid fornication) let every man have his own wife ( 1 Cor. 7:1-2 ). The Apostle advises the unmarried and widows to remain in the same state in which he himself finds himself, as more convenient in comparison with marriage, and he looks at marriage as a protection against carnal inflaming: Now I say to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they continue as I do. But if they cannot refrain, let them take hold: for it is better to marry than to burn ( 1 Cor. 7:8-9 ); the Apostle exhorts those who have entered into marriage to live in such a way that marriage may be honorable in all and the bed undefiled ( Heb. 13:4 ). The mutual relations of husband and wife in Christian marriage should be similar to the mutual relations of Christ and the Church, for their marital union signifies the union of Christ with the Church, and in this respect contains a great mystery ( Eph. 5:22-24; 31.32 ); as such, the marital union must be indissoluble until the death of one of the spouses: The wife is bound by law as long as her husband liveth: but if her husband die, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will, only in the Lord ( 1 Cor. 7:39 ).
This is how the Holy Fathers and teachers of the ancient church understood Christ's teaching on marriage. Of the many testimonies that we could cite in confirmation of what has been said, we will point out at least some that leave no doubt about it.
Virginity is good, says Chrysostom, it is better than marriage... as much as heaven is better than earth, and angels are better than men, and to put it more strongly, even more so. However, I do not include marriage among the bad deeds. Marriage was given for the purpose of procreation, and even more so for the extinguishing of the natural flame, but later, when the earth, and the sea, and the whole universe were filled, only one purpose remained for it - the eradication of intemperance and debauchery... It is a haven of chastity for those who wish to use it well, not allowing nature to rage... But there are people who do not need such protection and instead protect the fury of nature with fasts, vigils, prostrations and other austerities of life; I advise such people not to enter into marriage, but I do not forbid marriage. Condemnation would only be just if someone were striving for an evil recognized by all, but he who has a lesser good and has not achieved a greater, although he is deprived of praise and admiration for this, cannot be condemned in justice. I forbid fornication and adultery, but never marriage. And I punish and excommunicate those who dare the former, but I unceasingly praise those who have chosen the latter, if they observe chastity (Works of St. John Chrysostom . Vol. I. Part I. SS. 299, 307, 298, 311, 312, 316).
Blessed Jerome also views marriage in the same way.
"I have not condemned and do not condemn marriage," he writes in defense against accusations of excessive humiliation of married life, "but I extolled virginity to the heavens, not because I have it, but because I marvel at it the more because I do not have it. Marriage is inferior to virginity, which is born of marriage. Please read and carefully consider the words of the Apostle, and you will see that in order to avoid slander, I was much more lenient towards marriage than it turns out according to the Apostle's thought." As for second marriage, the Apostle allows it because of my intemperance, and not at his own desire. He wants everyone to be like himself, to think about the things that are God's, and, having freed themselves, to no longer be bound. But since he saw that the weak, through intemperance, fall into the abyss of debauchery, he gives his hand to bigamy. The Apostle's desire is twofold: one commands: "I say to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they continue, as I do"; the other only permits: "And if they cannot restrain themselves, let them take the trouble: for it is better to marry than to burn." And so what? Do I condemn the second marriage? Not at all; I praise the first. Do I excommunicate those who marry twice? No, but I call upon those who marry once to abstinence (Works of Blessed Jerome . Vol. II. CC. 19, 44, 47-48; Vol. III. CC. 19, 21-22).
St. Isidore of Pelusium writes: Celibacy is higher than marriage, as heaven is higher than earth, the soul is higher than the body… Marriage is lawful when it is not for lust, but for procreation. An honest marriage is immeasurably lower than virginity and higher than fornication to a greater extent than it is lower than virginity (Works of St. Isidore of Pelusium. Book 2. Page 351; Book III. Page 104; Book IV. Page 281).
Finally, the very rite of marriage existing in the Orthodox Church speaks of the same thing, as the Holy Fathers and Teachers of the Church unanimously testify - that married life is a conditional blessing, that its height depends on the degree of its spirituality. It looks upon the first marriage as a haven of chastity, to which it testifies in its prayers: Preserve them, O Lord our God, as Thou didst preserve Noah in the ark; preserve them, O Lord our God, as Thou didst preserve Jonah in the belly of the whale; preserve them, O Lord our God, as Thou didst preserve the three holy youths from the fire, sending down upon them dew from heaven: and may that joy come upon them which blessed Helen had when she found the precious cross ; it looks upon the second marriage as already a testimony of intemperance, and therefore the very rite of the second marriage is distinguished by a penitential character; She prays for those getting married for the second time: Grant them (Lord) the publican's conversion, the harlot's tears, the robber's confession: so that by repentance from their whole heart, in unanimity and peace doing Your commandments, they may be deemed worthy of Your heavenly kingdom .
It seems to us that the evidence we have cited from the word of God and the God-wise Fathers and teachers of the universal Church sufficiently confirms the validity of our view on the sexual side of the marriage union, and at the same time resolves the remaining questions we have raised; it seems that, based on them, we have the right to make the following conclusions:
a) in the Sacrament of Marriage it is not passion that is sanctified, not the existing sinful relationship between the flesh and the spirit, but the abstinence of those getting married; the carnal nature of man is brought, as far as possible, to its own order, i.e. to the state in which it was originally and in which it should have remained constantly according to the idea of the Creator;
b) the more the spirit prevails over the flesh in a marriage union, the purer and more sublime, from a Christian point of view, the marriage itself;
c) since the marriage union serves the sensual nature of man, it must be recognized as inferior to perfect virginity;
d) both in the married state and in the unmarried state, various degrees of perfection are possible;
d) only that Christian marriage can be recognized as equal in honor to virginity in which passion is completely absent; perfect marriage and perfect virginity, therefore, completely coincide with each other.