Thanks for this George, I'll be interested to see where you go with it. I would like to add two points to what you've got here, one a point of context, the other a theological observation (and my apologies if you're touching on them in your next section and I'm being premature...)

1. I think it helps to have some context for the "married once" bit. According to sources I've looked at (Adkins & Adkins, Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome) roughly a third of Roman marriages ended within 10 years the culprits being in equal measure divorce or death of a partner. (We often forget how risky childbirth was for women then!)

2. After reading through 1 Cor 7 with my wife's parish on Sunday, I am more convinced than ever that a Christian theology of marriage and sexuality cannot begin with marriage. Instead, given the evidence in several early and independent strands of Christian thought (1 Cor 7, Matt 22:23-33|Mark 12:18-27|Luke 20:27-40, et al.) and its enduring presence in 2nd century interpreters and beyond (like the Encratites), we must recognize that the preferred option for Christians was celibacy. Marriage comes in a distant second for those without self-control; like divorce, it is a concession to our weakness... (Speaking as a weak married person myself... :-))

If we don't recognize this fundamental fact, we mistake the proper contours of the discussion.

"The history of Christian marriage is an unfolding narrative of increasing grace, albeit a history of slow and uneven progress."

What a quaint 19th century understanding of history...

Dennis Bosley

I'm going to push back against Derek's #2 for a moment. The latter can and I think did lead to Docetic and flesh-hating tendencies. I think we have to move beyond this notion of strong/weak to what is God's will in a particular person's life. The former tendency tends to lead to devaluation of marriage as a vocation and as discipleship. Celibacy as with marriage should at heart be oriented toward chastity, that is purity or singularity of heart. Sr. Mary Margaret Funk's work on such matters in the monastic mode, "Thoughts Matter" is helpful in this regard.

I think our Prayer Book tradition provides for this moderate, vocation oriented approach that seeks to build up others to their particular calling rather than put down the many for the building up of the few. This is to say, we need a renewed multivalent discussion of lifestyle vocations in our time, not a revisiting that reproduces some of the problems of the past.

That is to say, the virtue or orientation toward Christ, chastity (and its attending virtues), rather than a particular expression of this, celibacy, should be the starting point.

As I recall, from reading Duby's The Knight, the Lady and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France, for much of Christian history, at least through the Medieval period, the Church had little interest in marriage at all, save regarding clergy. Their participation in marriage of secular couples was largely limited to nobility (as serfs weren't really free to marry in the first place), and then only to pray for fertility.

Marshall Scott

I'm going to push back against Derek's #2 for a moment. The latter can and I think did lead to Docetic and flesh-hating tendencies.

Oh, I agree entirely, Christopher--but if we're talking about constructing a Christian theology that is grounded in the Scriptures, than we have to investigate what it is that the Scriptures are saying. Those are the words on the page. A discussion of the biblical witness (cf. the thesis statement at the head of the first paragraph) that elides or ignores the textual calls to celibacy is not dealing with the full New Testament let alone biblical witness.

I too think that chastity is the proper beginning and it avoids the trap of the assumption of the normativity of marriage that some often fall into with this discussion.

Marshall and Derek have it exactly right! Even in the late medieval era, the vast majority of marriages (except royal or noble ones) had nothing to do with the Church, but were effected merely by common consent and declaration.

We have colored our ideas of marriage from culture, not from Scripture.

Some while ago, I put together the following (in defense of monasticism).

A bible reader, uncontaminated by current culture, would read of a celibate Master and Lord:
A. who chose, called, and surrounded himself with celibate men and women as apostles — in some cases (e.g., St. Peter) possibly actually taking them away from their families (Mk 1:30 & Matt. 19:27), and having little sympathy with those who placed family bonds ahead of discipleship (Matt. 8:21-22 & Lk. 9:59-62).
B. whose primary comments on marriage are warnings about its pitfalls — so that his followers declare that it seems expedient not to marry. (Matt. 19:10)
C. who clearly teaches that God favors those who own little or nothing, and that the rich have no chance of salvation. (Mark 10:25)
D. who declares, "whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33)
E. who promises his apostles: "There is no one who has given up home, or wife, brothers, parents, or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not be repaid many times over in this age, and in the age to come have eternal life." [Note: the only biblical "guarantee" of eternal salvation to any specific person[s] aside from the Penitent Thief.] (Luke 18:29-30)
F. who praises the widow who gives away all that she owns. (Mark 12:43)
G. whose first followers sold all that they owned, lived a communal and shared life, and went to church services every day. (Acts 2:44-47)
H. whose most prolific apologist (St. Paul) also chose to go against his culture and remain celibate (like his Lord) — and who advocated celibacy as the ideal for all Christians (tolerating marriage only as a poor compromise with human libido) (1 Cor. 7:9) — and who praised those "real widows" who choose not to re-marry, (I Tim. 5:3, 9-12) — and who calls upon Christians to "pray constantly". (1 Thess. 5:17)

Commentators have used a lot of ingenuity to try to find "escape" clauses or explain away the plain sense, but it seems there can be little doubt that a life of poverty, celibacy, obedience, and prayer is exactly and precisely in keeping with virtually everything the biblical record tells us Jesus Himself did and taught, with all that his disciples did and taught, and with the way in which the original Jerusalem Christians (who had known Jesus personally) lived.

Yes, I always find it very, very interesting indeed that Luke 14:33 is never used as a prooftext in any of these discussions.

But how can anybody deny the "plain sense of Scripture" there? "Whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple."

Seems pretty straightforward, to me....

BSnyder wrote:

But how can anybody deny the "plain sense of Scripture" there? "Whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple."

I'm not trying to take away from the radical call of Jesus to discipleship here.

But I have to ask:

Are intimate relationships something that we "have" ?

This is a quite serious question -- both about the persons with whom we are bound in love and commitment and about the way we interpret Scripture.

Everyone has a hermeneutic. One person's "plain sense" may be another's "contextually bound."

And everyone has, or rather lives inside, a culture. Everyone.

Again -- I'm with you on the radical call, and I do think Jesus turns our worlds upside down. I do think he asks for our whole selves. I'm just not sure I buy this particular use of Scripture to make this particular argument about marriage.

The point I'm making is that nobody follows "the plain sense of Scripture." And that the use of this argument against gay people - and it's used that way every single day - is nothing but a tremendous (and laughable) hypocrisy.

The major point being made by Derek and others here is, as Fr. John-Julian notes, arguments around marriage have been "contaminated by current culture" to the point where nobody even notices what the words on the page say anymore - and where all sorts of excuses are made to avoid "the plain sense of Scripture" when it's inconvenient for those who use the argument against others. And who never think to apply it to themselves.

As Derek says, "a Christian theology of marriage and sexuality cannot begin with marriage." But that's where everybody begins, because that's where the culture says to begin. People who accuse gay folks, and the Episcopal Church, of being "wedded to the culture" apparently can't see the log in their own eye for the speck in somebody else's.

(I mean, let's face it: Jesus says that "If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple." And I believe the word used is, really and explicitly, "hate."

These are Jesus' "family values"! Interesting, as I say, that this never seems to be used as a prooftext for anything. Yet somehow it's OK to bring up the "plain sense of Scripture" when it comes to gay people?

By what logic, really?)