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for God's heart and truth by Jeramy Townsley ADDENDUM 1. Marriage (these have been added based on e-mails to me or submissions to the message board) 1. Marriage: One problem that some people have with homosexuality, while they may be able to accept the positive linguistic arguments above, is the fact that there are no Biblical "models" of a gay marriage. Therefore, they conclude, that since we have no gay married people in Scripture, but we have many examples of heterosexual marriages, that gay marriages have no Biblical basis (see Addendum 4 for a possible example of a Biblical example of a gay marriage). To extend this even further, since gay marriages are allegedly not allowed in Scripture, and if sex outside of marriage is prohibited, then gay sex is necessarily always sin. I agree with this in part. I strongly agree that sex outside of marriage is sin. My counter-argument, however, is that marriage is never well-defined in Scripture. In fact, even in the early church there was no good way to proclaim a marriage. Marriage as a sacrament was not canonized until 1215 in the 4th Lateran Council (Boswell (1994), pg. 178). Marriage in the Greek and Roman sense was mainly a selling of the bride to the husband for the dowry. Since women had few rights, marriage was, in essence, a transfer of ownership of the daugther from the father to the husband. This was primarily the case in the upper social classes, and was a contractual affair. The lower classes did not have the contractual basis for marriages, and they were not recognized by the legal system (pg. 35). But no doubt some sort of communal acceptance of a couple's "union" occurred in the Greco-Roman system, even though it had no legal basis. In later Roman law marriage was recognized universally, and the rule was that "It was not cohabitation, but consent that makes marriage," and " Not coitus, but marital affection constitutes matrimony" (pg. 51). One of the few good definitions of marriage I can find in Scripture is Genesis 2:24 ("For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh."). But the idea that this defines marriage is only implied, it is nowhere explicated. There are no definitions for the ritual of marriage. There is no place in Scripture that says "A couple will be considered married when thus and so occurs, or when the priest pronounces such and so." Thus we are left with looking to the culture in which Scripture uses the term marriage to help clarify for us what marriage entails, and to look at Biblical models for giving us guidelines on those relationships that we can infer are marriages, either from context, or by the usage of words such as husband and/or wife (ie Adam and Eve, Priscilla and Aquila, etc.) To say that the Bible excludes gay marriages from lack of Biblical models of gay marriages is weak evidence. There is no Biblical model for using crackers, grape juice, or disposable plastic cups for communion, but many churches do so. There is no Biblical model for a "baptismal" in the church (while there is archeological evidence) or sprinkling, but many churches do it. There is no Biblical model for children's ministry, music ministry, or even full-time paid staff. There is no Biblical model for using sound systems, slide projectors, church vans, crosses, holy water, hymnals, etc. for worship, but many churches use them anyway. What we see churches doing, is taking the symbols that are found in Scripture, and modifying them to be relevant to contemporary society. As long as the core of the Gospel message is left unaltered, and the truths and commands found in Scripture remain intact, most Christians would have little problem with contextualization. Further, they would probably be upset if a church didn't contextualize. Moreover, we have several models of marriage in Scripture. In the Old Testament, we have modeled both monogamy, and bigamy. There is no hint that either form of marriage is condemned in Scripture. They both seem to be on equal footing, and the prevalence of Biblical references seems to parallel the prevalence of the type of marriage in the culture of the time. We also find examples of arranged marriages--those arranged directly by God, those arranged by the ruler of the land, and those arranged by the families of the persons involved. We see marriages that are based on economic reasons, and even slave marriages. We see examples of women who are married primarily to bear children, women who are married out of love, and the assumption that a widow should marry the closest male relative of her dead husband. There is no good evidence that any of these forms of marriage are denounced in Scripture (see below at the end of Addendum 1). The conclusion I draw from this, is that the Biblical definition of marriage is reliant on cultural factors. There is no "Biblical norm" for marriage, other than behavioral norms "within" marriage. Even St. Augustine, representing ascetical early church orthodoxy "was willing to designate as a 'wife' any woman who intended to be permanently faithful to the man she lived with" (Boswell (1980), pg. 26). Despite his endless commands to avoid lust, and prohibitions of sexuality, he seems to admit by proxy the inability to tie Scripture down to rules of who can, and how to marry. We do, however, see many Biblical rules regarding the conduct of those who are already in a marriage. Behaviors such as love, fidelity, commitment and respect are all essential aspects to marriage. Homosexual marriages can have these equally as well as heterosexual marriages. There are no Biblical references which prohibit, or even imply a prohibition on gay marriages. The lack of gay marriage models in the Old Testament can be attributed to the lack of acceptance in the culture of the time, therefore there would be few gay married people, thus little probability that they would be modeled. In the New Testament, there are very few models of marriage (not rules for those already married, but models of who married at that time), especially compared to what we see in the Old Testament. Marriage is discussed, but rarely modeled. Homosexuality, however, was an accepted part of Greek culture. So it cannot be said that gay marriages weren't prohibited in the New Testament because they weren't known about at that time. The emperor Nero (ruled 54-68 CE) had a very public marriage ceremony to another man, and at least by Juvenal's time a couple of decades later, gay marriages were commonplace (Boswell (1994), pg. 80-81). Gay marriages did exist in the common forum, yet we see no Biblical prohibitions of them. Rather, what we do see, if we take Scripture as a whole, are various models of marriage, defined only by the community who recognizes the relationship as a marriage, and by the behavioral motifs mentioned above that characterize a godly marriage. (The following is a list of models of marriage that I find from
Genesis to Judges. The primary argument being made in this addendum is
that the Biblical models of marriage are not clear-cut, one-man
to one-woman, as many people would like to believe. Moreover, the argument
that we should use the strictly Biblical models of marriage for
our current behavioral motifs is found to be absurd, once we actually look
at the Biblical models. Most people will find these models abhorrent and
would fight them were they seriously proposed today. In each of these models,
there is neither clear denunciation, nor even implication that God disapproves
of them, except for Genesis 2:22, which is the primary model we use in
western society (marry whomever you choose).
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