A trip to the altar or confessional won’t fix marital ills.
Readership: Christians
Theme: Church Policy and Sacramental Marriage
Length: 1,100 words
Reading Time: 5.5 minutes
Summary
According to the authority of the Sola Ecclesia Apostolicity, the Sex = Marriage paradigm that is presented in the Bible and which prevailed before the modern age was rendered invalid by ecumenical policy at the end of the Middle Ages, and this eventually became the law of the land in the early modern age. In fact, these policies are entirely responsible for ushering in the modern age. As a result, Marriage has become identified with Church / State Confirmation, and has totally replaced the idea that Sex = Marriage.
In late Medieval times, the move towards regulating marriage was a response to the breakdown of societal institutions and all the administrative and legal fuss that ensued. The stated motivation was to eradicate the abuses of the common law system of Sex = Marriage and to protect women from abduction, repudiation (informal divorce, essentially what we would now call abandonment, fly-by-nights, or one-night-stands), and clandestine marriage (any unions not officially sanctioned by the church). This can be compared to the present day obsession with making sure hookups are fair, except with a tinge of Christian morality. They had the idea that requiring the formal solemnization of marriage with a priest as witness would do the trick.
Thus, civil marriage (Sex = Marriage) became ‘Ecclesiastically Officiated Marriage’ (Sacramental Marriage) with Church laws regulating the terms of both the union and the celebration, followed by state sanctioned marriage (Sex ≠ Marriage), even though this artifice stands at odds with biblical accounts.
This is not a social construct that is unique to Catholicism and Sacramental marriage, as some commenters have maintained, but it is conveyed through both Cathodoxy and Protestantism, and all of society, as I described in Apostolic Apostasy (2023/6/16).
Instead of decreasing the prevalence of ‘abuses’, the longitudinal effect of dissociating sex from marriage has resulted in…
- The culture-wide bifurcation of the SMP from the MMP.
- Generational rebellion, e.g. The Pendulum Effect.
- The liberation of women to abuse themselves and all of society by removing all mechanisms of restraint.
- An increase in fornication, OOW births, polysexuality, and divorce.
- The debasing of marriage.
- Many ethical conundrums.
- Widespread depression and hopelessness.
- Legal and social prerogatives that are misandristic and are unjustly prejudiced to enable and reward women’s sins.
- Further doctrinal compromises in response to the above changes.
Today, amid all of the above problems, the stated reasons for maintaining Sacramental Marriage are…
- To inculcate a higher standard for marriages to be sacramental / sanctified.
- To provide an ecumenical tool to ensure marital sanctity within the church.
But it’s a band-aid on a broken neck.
In spite of Cathodoxy’s lofty stance of preserving the integrity of marriage as a sacrament, from a comprehensive historical viewpoint, it has done nothing for the integrity of marriage, all things considered. In fact, the church has done more harm than good.
- It has not decreased the prevalence of ‘abuses’, but has invigorated them.
- Instead of preventing single motherhood, it coddles and celebrates them.
- Instead of reducing the prevalence of OOW births, it feeds the abortion mill.
- It doesn’t change the fact that marriage is now a hellish experience for most men.
- It doesn’t change the fact that men staying married to ex-s10re wives is an embarrassment to the church.
- It doesn’t cure venereal diseases.
- It doesn’t change the fact that many married men suffer from liver damage accumulated from drinking as a coping mechanism.
- It doesn’t prevent their children’s knowledge of God from being defiled, all the while believing it is holy.
I am becoming more convinced that Sex = Marriage is a better way to look at things.
Epilogue
So what does it all mean? Which paradigm is “right”?
Using the principle of superposition, they must both be true. To wit,
- If you want to maximize marital bonding, joy, and sanctification, and thereby achieve God’s best for your marital relationship, then limit yourself to N = 1 for as long as you and your one-life-stand shall live. This is God’s will for those called to marriage.
- If you want to be an upstanding member of a church, have your marriage recognized as legit, and not be continually derided and harassed for living in perpetual sin, then you must observe the Sacramental Marriage rites, or whatever other official assertions or qualifications are required by the particular church you attend. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
So the gospel message for those who fail to navigate the broken SMP (which is currently the de facto doorway to the MMP), is that men can receive “God’s special gift of (involuntary) celibacy” for a 10+ year span, allowing them to participate in the sufferings of Christ who was likewise chaste. Meanwhile women can slore around to their wicked widget’s content, thereby fulfilling the archetype of Idolatrous Israel. Upon marriage, men may assume the honors of wearing the prophetic mantle of Hosea, as he must stay married to a woman who has debased the relationship by riding the carousel before marriage. This in no way negates the years of bitterness and rejection that have shaped one’s life trajectory towards being a disrespected and underappreciated workhorse, but at least you’ll have a wife to fight with at home and in church and children to fight for in court. You can also join the men’s bible study at church and discuss the joys of servant leadership or whatever.
The gospel message for Ch@ds and carouselers who bombed on N > 1 is that if your last coital encounter turns out to be a lasting one, and upon convincing an empathetic clergy member that you have truly forsaken your ways of sin and have “settled down” (Translation: You have accepted the social responsibilities stipulated by polite society’s concept of Christian adulthood), then you can go through the ancient magic rites of passage and make your Nth “One Flesh” / “playing house” debased marriage officially recognized by God in the eyes of His holy church. This in no way negates the jaded wear and tear you accumulated from racking up N de facto concubines / dannas and then “sending them away” or “being sent away” (repudiation, AKA Biblical divorce), but at least no one will chide you for it with threats of eternal damnation. You can join the church’s breakfast club and you can get on with making the best of whatever life consequences you have accrued for yourself.
All jesting aside, it is God Who brings individuals to repentance and Who works to regenerate their hearts by His grace through their faith.
Related
- Donal Graeme: What We Mean By Marriage (2014/6/14)
- The Southern Cross: History of the Sacrament of Marriage (2019/9/24)
- Darwin Catholic: When A Marriage is not a Marriage (2023/1/22)
- Σ Frame: Regulations vs. Reality (2023/5/30)
- Christianity and Masculinity: Moral agency and sex define a marriage (2023/6/14)
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Perhaps I have been misunderstanding this entire discussion, so correct if required, but it seems to me the prime incoherence of a “Sex = Marriage” standard is that it effectively nullifies fornication as a category: sex between two singles becomes itself the consummation of a marriage — i.e. no sin. Then, when Paul counseled to “flee fornication,” I have trouble conceiving what act he could be referencing.
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Over-consummating with multiple partners and/or someone else’s partner??
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Cato: in context of this paradigm, those would function as adultery, not fornication.
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Paul didn’t say or write, “flee fornication.” “Fornication” is an English word which did not exist until (c. 1300AD) over 1,200 years after the New Testament was written.
The apostle Paul wrote: Φεύγετε τὴν πορνείαν. (1 Corinthians 6:18), which literally means: “Flee the sexual-immorality.”
Most newer Bibles no longer use the word “fornication”, since it isn’t used much anymore and it has various meanings, depending upon whom you ask. “Sexual immorality” is a more all-inclusive phrase describing the Greek word “porneia”. If you search a Bible like the ESV, the word “fornication” never is mentioned in any of the 66 books of the Bible. So, the term “fornication” was never actually mentioned in the inspired word of God. Except to those in the KJV-only-cult. 😉
If you look at what the Bible describes and teaches, it all generally fits with the simple understanding that:
Sex with a virgin or widow = One Flesh = Husband and Wife / Concubine
OR
Sex with another living man’s wife = adultery = death
πορνείαν (porneia) — sexual immorality, — illicit sexuality, could refer to various things that shouldn’t be done in order to keep the marriage bed undefiled / uncompromised. If I were to guess, πορνείαν could apply to things other than pen!s in vagina sex, such as: oral sex, cavorting together unclothed, erotic groping and grinding, and so on, but it might also include any sort of sexual sin or unfaithfulness against saving yourself and your sexuality for your rightful mate.
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John,
I too am still trying to wrap my head around all the details and ramifications of the Sex = Marriage paradigm as it was practiced in the past and how to look at this through a Biblical lens.
One useful way I have come to understand fornication / porneia is to look at it in terms of God’s purposes for marriage and family formation. Basically, porneia is sexual activity that never leads anywhere with respect to satisfying God’s prerogatives and is thus a squandered opportunity. Using this lens (sexual activity that doesn’t progress towards fulfilling God’s purposes for marriage), it is much easier to see what porneia might include: Activities that debase sexual purity and the marital relationship; when it isn’t supported by life-long commitment; when there is no deepening bonding and trust; when there are no children produced, when the formation of a family is frustrated; and so on.
The most obvious examples would include any / all of the following.
— Adultery
— Pr0st!tut!0n
— Sexual union (Biblical marriage) followed by repudiation (informal divorce, or “sending away”).
I see Derek has also responded to your question in his post, Marriage isn’t Magic (2023/6/21). He looks at fornication / porneia in terms of sexual purity and life-long commitment.
Porneia can also be understood in terms of its spiritual effects, both on the relationship and on one’s soul: bitterness, brokenheartedness, inability to trust, loss of confidence and faith, cynicism, depression, jadedness, loneliness, lost opportunities, lust, regret, remorse, guilt, shame, etc.
Depending on your own convictions and how far you want to take it, it could also include activities that incite lust, inflame a desire for sex in an immoral context, and lead to sexual frustration; things like masturbation, pornography, immodest clothing, obsession with fetishes, sexual addictions, sexual withholding in marriage, etc. We’ve discussed these things before here in the past, and the more we got into the minutiae, the more disagreement there was among readers about what would be allowable under the law of liberty / grace, and what doesn’t contribute to the glory of God. For example…
— Most men would agree that sexual withholding in marriage is a transgression, but Σ Frame scholars cannot all agree that it is porneia.
— Most everyone would agree that women wearing miniskirts to church is immodest, but is it porneia?
— Is it porneia for a woman not to wear a headcovering if her beauty incites men to lust?
— Is a second marriage after divorce porneia?
— Is a debased marriage porneia?
IMHO, it’s ALL porneia, but at the risk of being legalistic, we should also consider God’s grace in these matters. In questionable or culturally acceptable matters, and since we are so accustomed to some of these, it is difficult to identify it as a sin. We don’t usually recognize something as a sin until we start to see some of the bad fruits. It’s even harder to admit it is a sin and repent of it. Since some things are practically impossible to avoid it becomes a question of how to deal with it, rather than simply labeling it porneia or not. Categorizing sins may give us a cathartic sense of psychological satisfaction, but whether it is a sin of porneia or not doesn’t really matter as much as getting your life together and making peace with God.
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Under Sex = Marriage
Questions:
If Sex= Marriage, then every person a man / woman sleeps with is a husband / wife? Then there would be ONLY polyandry and polygamy? This excludes not just premarital sex but also adultery. Yet the Bible forbids adultery. Why?
Unless the claim is made that polygyny is ok but not polyandry.
Under this… When a man has multiple sexual partners, it is polygyny ( he is married to them all) but a woman is married to the FIRST man she gave her virginity to, and all the rest are adulterous relationships. In such a case, men can have polygynous relationships — just only with virgins. If he sleeps with a woman who has been with another man, then it is adultery and they are both condemned to death.
But the Biblical template in the Garden of Eden — endorsed as the heart of God as GOD’s purpose in marriage by Jesus in Matthew 19:5-6 — refers to A man and A woman — which would exclude polygyny?
Next — When a man weds a woman knowing she slept with other men before him, is that not adultery, whether she was wedded to anyone or not? Technically she is married to the first man she gave her virginity to, and all the others (including such man) are adulterous relationships. Or is it Polyandry? And the present man is just another husband — in which case how do you define adultery?
If such a wedded man is legally divorced by such a woman (assuming he had sex with her and had children ), should the man seek reconciliation with this woman? Should he fight such a divorce since technically he was not married to her but actually committing adultery with her? Instead of seeking reconciliation with said woman or judging her for adultery, should he not be repenting of adultery himself? More importantly, should the church support such reconciliation? Or should she be encouraged to go back to her first husband — the one she gave her virginity to? Would it make a difference if that first man was wedded to someone else or not?
Should the church only sanction (wed) virgins as proper marriage? And condemn all others as sexual immorality?
Another question about Jesus’ statement to the Samaritan woman.
What did Jesus mean by the fact that she had 5 HUSBANDS (PLURAL)? Is this the number of men she slept with OR the number of men she was wedded to?
If the FORMER (which is SEX = MARRIAGE) what did He mean by saying the man she was living with at present was NOT her husband? On what basis did he differentiate the present man from her former husbands?
Note: I do not ask the above questions from the point of view of judgment. My husband and I followed the Biblical template. Both of us have only been with each other and that too after the wedding. We both stand by and teach “One Man, One Wife — for life”, as that is our understanding of the Scriptures.
However, we live in a broken, fallen world and I was just wondering how do we minister to people in that world — people who have messed up? What is the template for HOLINESS (which is the HEART of GOD) in this area moving forward for people who have messed up in this area (in addition to repentance)? How would that look going forward? Do these people wed / marry / reconcile with their first partner or with their present partner?
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I would look at it as any sin. You have been off the right path, you cannot go back in time and choose differently, but you can move forward, repent, ask for forgiveness, and make the best of your current situation.
As a counselor or spiritual advisor, if you get someone to understand that sexual connections are eternal, that sex binds you to someone in a “one flesh” union, and that you need to have that mindset going forward, you have done all you can do. The rest is up to God and His grace and mercy.
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A little nit to pick: sexual connections are not eternal, but temporal unions of flesh, “till death do us part”. Let’s not wax too romantic, sex and marriage are not spiritual but are natural, earthly, and temporal works of our flesh according to God’s natural law. The mystical poppycock which churchian pastors spout at weddings is designed to reinforce the over-importance of women to bolster their apostate woman-worship.
God explains this to the fallen angels in the book of Enoch:
The theological conundrum is that God gave sinless Adam the woman to continue the existence of mortal men, “in order that descendants should never fail them upon the earth”, because God foreknew that Adam was going to become mortal, condemned to earthly death, through the work of the defiler whom God would give to Adam presupposing his sin and mortality as a result of his hearkening to the defiling woman whom God was “gifting” to him.
You can even hear Adam’s protestation that he felt betrayed by God’s test.
Adam, who was God’s son (Luke 3:38) was implying that he never would have disobeyed his Father if not for the coaxing of the defiler whom the Father Himself had given to him. Adam wrongly chose to trust and obey his beloved underling (whom he erroneously assumed to be trustworthy because she was given to him by holy God) when she coaxed him to obey her and to disobey his own Father.
Moral of the story: Marriage was never really for the benefit of men but was always to serve God’s purposes in order to display God’s great glory.
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Rowena,
What naturallyapirated says is correct:
I would put it this way. Illicit sex is not a coherent expression of marriage. It is inherently disordered. The mechanics of illicit sex—how it works—are incoherent. It can’t really be adequately placed into a sensible logical framework. For example, explaining adultery is like trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Sin can never make sense of reality or truth. God’s rules for marriage are extremely simple and coherent—only have sex with your spouse and never divorce—but as soon as you deviate from this in any way, it stops making sense. So when you ask:
I can only say is this: you cannot undo your past, you can only repent and move forward. And so…
…If someone is married, remain married. Do not divorce.
…If someone is unmarried and had sex with one or more persons still alive, remain single or reconcile to a previous partner (if both are currently unmarried).
…If someone is a virgin or widowed, freely choose to marry or remain single.
The church should sanction marriage—sex—involving virgins and widows. It should support reconciliation, where appropriate.
I will consider your other questions further.
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Rowena,
To your questions…
Yes, until divorce, both of which may happen simultaneously.
Premarital—unmarried—sex is marital sex. Premartial sex is illicit if the partners fail to be spouses (i.e. implicit divorce). Like prostitution, no-strings-attached sex/marriage is logically incoherent.
“Adulterous relationship” is not a biblical concept. Adultery is any sex involving a married person that is not their spouse. Adultery is illicit, but it is marriage where divorce is usually—but not always—implicit. Michal had two husbands, David and Paltiel: neither divorced her. The Bible also describes husbands having multiple wives. These practical examples of polygamy show it to be highly disordered. Per Matthew 19:5-6, polygamy is now disallowed.
Yes, unless there are exceptions to divorce. I do not know how to correctly exegete the exception clause for divorce and so leave that up to others. I cannot tell you with any conviction that it is ever acceptable to marry another after divorce. It may be possible, in God’s grace, that remarriage is not always adultery. It has not been revealed to me.
Your scenarios are complex.
First, divorce does not terminate the marital bond. Only death does. Marriage to a new person is forbidden if any previous sexual partners are alive. Remain celibate.
Second, partners can only reconcile if they are both unmarried. They can’t get a divorce in order to reconcile.
Third, having committed adultery with someone who is divorced, the marriage is now established. You shouldn’t have gotten remarried in the first place, but now that you did you are stuck together. Divorce—a sin—cannot undo this, even if it were an “adulterous relationship”.
Fourth, if one unwisely marries someone who is already married, they’ve opened a can of irrationality that I cannot resolve. Like David, Paltiel, and Michal, it will most likely end in tears.
In Greek the word for ‘man’ is the same as ‘husband’. Consider this rewording:
She certainly, ahem, had all six men, and we know that the sixth man—which she had—was not hers. I can’t deduce that she was formally married to any of them, as “having” them might just refer to no-strings-attached sex.
Maybe she was the town prostitute. Maybe she was legitimately married to the five men and they had all died. Maybe she was married and divorced five times. Maybe she was now merely mistress to the sixth man. Maybe the sixth man was already married and Jesus is talking about polygamy.
In English the whole thing reads like a double-entendre:
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Ramman3000 sir,
Thank you sir. Your first comment echoes my husband’s position. He says sin takes you to an alternate trajectory so to speak but after repentance – you have to move forward as best you can while avoiding sexual immorality however that translates. You cannot reorder your life as if the sin has never happened. Else we all would be trying to get back to the Garden of Eden. Grace is given but sometimes the consequences have to be borne. Which is what makes obedience more attractive than repentance. As obedience completely bypasses the consequences of sin.
The second comment has given me much to think about. Thank you again.
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Off topic: for the morons who think Muslims are moral. This is true.
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“In my country it is notmal to have srx with young boys.”
To which the only appropriate response is “in case you haven’t noticed, you’re NOT IN YOUR COUNTRY, asshole!”
They should then by sent back to their country – minus their genitals.
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