The History of Marriage Within the Church
as it Pertains to Gay Marriage
By Wally Bryen
The subject of the recognition and blessing of the
marriages by those in homosexual relationships has been a hotly debated
topic in recent years. In a time of record deficit spending, the president
has stated that the government will spend 1.5 billion dollars on the
‘defense of marriage’ to ensure that only heterosexual men and women will be
allowed to marry. The recent Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that it is
unconstitutional to prevent homosexuals from participating in the rights and
responsibilities of marriage has caused a firestorm of protests by both
civil and church leaders. It is often said that beginning with Adam and Eve
God has ordained the institution of marriage as a holy rite. The marriage of
gays is thus seen as an attack on the sanctity of the institution of
marriage. Gay marriage has been described as a sacrilege undercutting the
very definition of marriage that has existed from the dawn of recorded
history.
Looking closer at the Biblical and historical record shows us that ideas of
marriage have changed considerably over the millennia. Practices once deemed
perfectly acceptable are now considered to be abhorrent. The New Testament
can be seen at times to radically change the understanding of marriage
resulting in a much more empowered position for women in marriage, even as
at other times it seems to firmly place women under the subjection of men.
Can it be that marriage is not the monolithic entity it is so often
purported to be in the rhetoric opposing gay marriage? Perhaps there are
ways of faithfully looking at both scripture and the values held by the
church that leave open the possibility of the church affirming and blessing
gay marriages.
Even though the Bible has been used as a source of the idea that marriage is
a sacred rite ordained by God from the beginning of history, there is
surprisingly little discussion in the Hebrew or New Testament scriptures
about what a marriage actually is. A search for the words ‘marriage’,
‘marry’ or ‘wife’ in the Bible yield numerous verses. Yet virtually none of
these discusses exactly what a marriage is. One is hard pressed to find
verses containing anything resembling “the Lord says a marriage happens
when…” or “marriage is Gods way of…” or “the reason the Lord wants us to be
married is…”. There are cases where the emphasis is on making sure the
Israelites do not marry foreigners such as in Nehemiah 13:27 “Shall we then
listen to you and do all this great evil and act treacherously against our
God by marrying foreign women?”(All scripture references are New Revised
Standard Version unless otherwise noted.). There are also instances where a
marriage is seen as a way of forming alliances as in 2 Chronicles 18:1 “Now
Jehoshaphat had great riches and honor; and he made a marriage alliance with
Ahab”. Leviticus 18:18 instructs men that “you shall not take a woman as a
rival to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is still
alive.” Interestingly, the explicit reference to the prohibition on marrying
two sisters seems to imply that it would be acceptable to have more than one
wife as long as they were not related, a practice certainly frowned upon in
modern times. The majority of cases in scripture seem to simply assume that
marriage is a preexisting cultural entity and that the reader would
understand what a marriage is without further explanation. But just what was
this cultural entity in ancient times?
In the vast majority of cases where it is discussed in the Hebrew scriptures
marriage is presented as a rather one-sided transaction. Daughters are
usually seen as objects ‘given’ in marriage by their fathers. Genesis 34:21
states “let us take their daughters in marriage, and let us give them our
daughters”. In I Kings 11:19 there is even an account of Pharaoh giving the
sister of his wife as a bride to Hadad. Often the husband is not even the
party negotiating for the bride, but the father of the husband, as in 2
Kings 14:9 “give your daughter to my son for a wife”. Seldom if ever is the
wife portrayed as having any decision-making power in the choice of a
husband, or even any input on the subject. Yamauch supports this view by
noting that in “ancient Mesopotamia marriages were arranged by parents…the
consent of the bride was not necessary”(Yamauch 1978, 241). There are few if
any references in the Bible to the minimum age of brides, but an indication
of likely minimum ages can be seen gleaned in noting that in ancient “Egypt
girls were married between the ages of twelve and fourteen” (Yamauch 1978,
242). Arranged marriages are certainly still prevalent in many cultures
across the globe. However, in the West particularly in the United States,
the idea of a woman as the property of her father and being forced to marry
against her will and become the property of her husband is now usually seen
as overly oppressive to the freedom of women. Furthermore, an attempt by a
grown man to marry what modern society calls a girl of twelve years old
would be seen now as a heinious act of pedophilia.
There is usually very little mention of love in the romantic sense as a
basis for marriage in the Hebrew scriptures. When there is any mention of
love it is usually a matter of what the potential husband wants, with no
concern mentioned about the woman’s wishes. Such is the case in the Genesis
29 account of Jacob who loved Rachel, yet there is no mention of a
reciprocal love on the part of Rachel for Jacob. Later in the story, when
Rachel and her sister Leah are both married to Jacob, the sisters’ squabbles
are not over the love of Jacob, but over who will bear him sons and thus
inherit the wealth of Jacob. The inheritance of this wealth would thus
enable the son to care for the mother. Additionally, this account of
multiple wives is neither frowned upon within the story, nor is it the only
such case in the Bible. There is even an instance where God appears to bless
the union of a man with his maidservants, as in the story of Abimelech in
Genesis 20. In this story, after Abimelech returns Sarah to Abraham God
blesses him by healing his wife and maidservants so that they bear children.
While it doesn’t explicitly state the maidservants bore him children, it
strongly implies such. Sarah herself gives her own servant Hagar to Abraham
as a wife to bear him children. Sarah is even described as Abraham’s half
sister. While many modern societies might frown on these practices, they are
presented within these canonical scriptural stories with a matter-of-fact
nonchalance as if that is just the way things were done at the time.
Men were seemingly seen as the source of life itself in marriage
relationships, as can be seen in Adam’s declaration in Genesis 4:1 that “I
have produced a man with the help of the Lord”. There is no mention of ‘we’
made a man implying a partnership with Eve, or indeed even the knowledge of
the basic biological facts of procreation as we know them today. The event
is portrayed as a creative act between God and Adam, with Eve merely
providing a place for the child to grow. This focus on procreation had a
great deal to do with the inheritance of wealth. Wives were expected to bear
children for their husbands in large part so that the man would have an heir
to inherit his wealth. While “the right of a widow to inherit the property
of her deceased husband was generally recognized in the cultures of the
Ancient Near East” (Davies 1981, 138), such was not the case in ancient
Hebrew society. If a Hebrew wife had no male children then “the nearest
kinsmen of the husband would have succeeded to the estate”(Davies 1981,
138-9). This precarious situation of childless widows is likely a source of
the Bible’s emphasis on concern for widows and orphans. One possible
exception that allowed a woman with no sons to participate in her husband’s
estate was known as the Levirate marriage in which “the brothers of the
deceased had the responsibility of providing the widow with male
heirs”(Davies 1981, 139). The assumption seems to be that the male heirs
that inherited the husband’s estate would then be able to care for their
mother. Such an arrangement would be almost unthinkable today.
The New Testament sometimes seems to reemphasize the Hebrew scriptures
subordinate status of the wife. In 1 Corinthians 11:3 Paul states that
“Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife”.
Throughout the New Testament Christ is referred to as out Lord and ruler. In
this context of Christ as our ruler, it would be easy to view these verses
in I Corinthians as laying out the natural order of humanity: Christ is the
ruler of men, and husbands are the rulers of wives. Indeed, church
leadership has often used these scriptures to defend just such a position.
Yet this passage is sandwiched between discussions of church liturgical and
eating practices with emphasis on the prevention of becoming a stumbling
block to new believers. It seems quite a bit out of place to throw in a few
verses about ‘the rightful place of women’ in the middle of these chapters.
Further, Paul is undoubtedly speaking to the prevailing cultural practices
when he says shortly thereafter in 11:14 “does not nature itself teach you
that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him?” The readers in
Corinth would see it as self-evident that a woman should have long hair, and
a man should have short hair. Yet many cultures do not hold that men should
have short hair. God even gave Samson a covenant of strength through his
long hair. It is entirely possible and probable that Paul’s assessment of
the husband as head of the wife reflected not an edit of the way things must
be, but a reflection of how things were at the time. We are then left with
the prospect of determining how we apply the overriding principles to our
culture today.
Paul emphasizes the more egalitarian nature of life in Christ when he states
in Galatians 3:38 that “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer
slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for you are one in
Christ”. In Ephesians 5:31 Paul instructs each husband to “love his wife as
himself”. The modern Western notion of marriage as originating between two
people who love each other so much that they want to spend their lives
together can make a reading of Ephesians 5:33 seem to be merely a friendly
reminder to not fall out of love. This message of love toward wives came at
a time when wives were seen by the larger society as virtual chattel
property for the benefit of the husband. This notion of treating a wife with
a spirit of love instead of ownership can be seen as a very empowering
egalitarian message of the value and dignity of wives.
The verses immediately prior to Ephesians 5:31 can also be seen to be a
reinterpretation of the passage so often quoted in order to show the divine
order of marriage as solely between man and woman. Genesis 2:24 reads
“Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and
they become one flesh”. He restates it not as a reflection of the natural
biological order of humanity as created in two genders. Here in Ephesians
5:29-32 his emphasis is on the unity in Christ: “for no one ever hates his
own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does
for the church, because we are members of his body. ‘For this reason a man
will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will
become one flesh’”. This New Testament notion recasts marriage away from a
transaction of property and domination towards a relationship of mutual
respect and partnership.
Even though the nature of marriage changes somewhat in the New Testament, it
is still not recorded in the scriptures as something that happens under the
authority of the church. Even in the Byzantine era marriage could be seen to
happen “through a blessing, or crowning, or a contract” (Viscuso 1991, 310).
This notion of blessing here “refers to betrothal” (Viscuso 1991, 310). This
betrothal was not fully a marriage, but the promise that such marriage would
take place. The betrothal differed from a mere verbal agreement, which would
have been considered an engagement, in the fact that a betrothal “was
brought about or celebrated through a sacred ‘blessing’…whose central
feature was a prayer…that the betrothal might be confirmed and made
indissoluble” (Viscuso 1991, 312). Eventually the church began to see
marriage as a sacrament imparting grace.
During the Reformation “Protestant marriage theory began to take shape: the
legitimacy and significance of civil authority over the institution was
recognized; the sacramental status which the Roman Catholic Church accorded
the institution was removed” (Yates 1985, 41). Yates further notes that
“Martin Luther considered marriage an order of creation whose origin
transcended both church and state” (Yates, 1985 41). This thought by Luther
began the belief still held by most Protestants that marriage is an
institution ordained by God. During the Reformation, the character of
marriage began to be viewed as a covenant rather than a contract. This
covenant relationship thus mirrors the relationship between God and Israel
“to become partners in a relationship marked by trust, fidelity, steadfast
love, justice, and obedience to the will of God” (Yates 1985, 42).
A recent editorial in Christianity Today noted that in modern times “the
increasing privatization of marriage has become almost absolute: neither the
community nor the paterfamilias (does such exist anymore?) has any say in
the formation or dissolution of a marriage. What was a community affair for
over 400 years has devolved into just one more exercise of personal choice”
(Editorial 2000, 40). This same article decries attempts to promote gay
marriages as a threat by “judicial activism and gay-rights activists working
together to empty marriage of its traditional meaning” (Editorial 2000, 40).
However, these representative arguments against gay marriages fail to
explain in any substance how allowing gay marriages would in any way change
the nature or understanding of heterosexual marriages. They fail to explain
how allowing same-sex couples “to become partners in a relationship marked
by trust, fidelity, steadfast love, justice, and obedience to the will of
God” (Yates 1985, 42) would prevent heterosexuals from access to those same
rights and responsibilities. Nor does it suggest how gay marriage would
remove such connotations from the institution of marriage as understood by
the church.
Others have argued “that marriage and the family are valuable social
institutions, especially important for children, but that they need to be
newly understood in nonpatriarchal and egalitarian ways…marital love
reflects God's own triune relationality. Marriage is an opportunity to
experience the reality of the divine. Marriage is an opportunity to
experience the reality of the divine” (Wall 2000, 1120). A fresh
interpretation of the theology of marriage should thus “strive to liberate
children from the widespread and often unacknowledged suffering caused by
modernity’s culture of divorce” (Wall 2000, 1121).
The traditional emphasis on procreation within marriage and the belief that
“the sacrament of marital love finds its further expression in parents’ love
for the fruits of their sexuality” (Wall 2000, 1120) might seem to exclude
homosexuals from the marriage rites, since homosexual acts can never produce
offspring. Yet the vast majority of current churches make no outcry of
damnation against childless couples, even if couples remain childless by
choice. The church sees married couples that participate in the possibility
of procreation by adoption or artificial insemination as equally valid
parents to those who have their own biological children. Childless couples
are still seen to embody this procreative possibility of their marriage by
being involved in the support of other people’s children, or even in the
support of the communities that foster the development of future
generations. The church has failed to adequately explain how childless
homosexual couples should not be allowed to marry on the basis of
infertility, when the same rules do not apply to heterosexuals. Nor do they
explain how homosexuals who become parents via adoption or other means would
be incapable of participating in the procreative nature of marriage.
It should be noted that even the most steadfast opponents to gay marriage on
the grounds that marriage is a holy sacrament allow that there is a civil
component of marriage that is separate from the constraints of church
doctrine. Many clergy refuse to marry couples unless both parties are
committed Christians. The Catholic Church refuses to recognize a second
marriage of someone who has divorced his or her first spouse. Some churches
refuse to include marriage vows calling for the wife to ‘obey’ her husband,
yet other churches consider this vow a fundamental component of the
ceremony. Yet none of these churches fight to make these restrictions and
requirements part of the common law of the land. Allowing the state to
sanction gay marriages would still leave individual churches the freedom to
refuse to perform gay marriages on the basis of their own beliefs.
Many of the proponents of gay marriage in the current political sphere argue
from the basis of civil rights. They argue that homosexuals should have the
same right to marriage that heterosexuals do. This may be the case, but
perhaps this argument is incomplete, and does not fully counter the
arguments against gay marriage as an attack on the ‘sanctity of marriage’.
Perhaps the church needs to be a prophetic voice that calls for a deeper
commitment by all people, heterosexual or otherwise, to the spiritual
aspects of marriage. The church can and should support and nurture marriages
based on Christian principals of love, trust, honesty, commitment and faith
in God. The church should be the institution leading society to a more just
understanding that the promotion of Christ-centered marriages does not have
to exclude homosexuals from the equation. Indeed, the very existence of
committed Christian, monogamous, married homosexual couples within the
community can nurture the next generation of homosexual youth. Married gay
couples within the church can affirm to young people that it is possible to
be who and what God made them to be, and still be in deep communion with God
and with community. It can also provide the next generation with a model for
moral, Godly homosexual behavior.
References
Davies, Eryl W. 1981. Inheritance Rights and the Hebrew
Levirite Marriage. Vetus Testamentum. 31 no 2 (April): 138-144.
Viscuso, P 1991. The Formation of Marriage in Late Byzantium. St. Vladimir’s
Theological Quarterly 35 no 4: 309-345.
Yamauch, Edwin M. 1978. Cultural Aspects of Marriage in the Ancient World.
Bibliotheca sacra. 135 (July-Sep): 241-252.
Yates, Wilson 1985. The Protestant View of Marriage. Journal of Ecumenical
Studies. 22 no 1 (Winter): 41-54.
Editorial 2000. Just Married? Christianity Today. 44 no 5 (April): 40-1.
Wall, John 2000. Review of Marriage After Modernity: Christian Marriage in
Postmodern Times by Adrian Thatcher. In The Christian Century 117 no 30
(November): 1120-1.
© 2004 By Wally Bryen, Used with Permission