Yet Angst about the aberrations of, and problems with, marriage, while justified, perhaps diverts our attention from concepts which might yield the possible solutions to these problems. Instead of worrying about divorce, adultery, and homosexuality, it might be more instructive, constructive, and productive to consider what marriage is and ought to be.
What marriage is - how 'marriage' is defined - is finally something to be discovered, not invented. It is an independent fact about the universe, not a human construct. It a structural aspect of the cosmos, not a piece of legislation. The more, and the better, it is understood, the greater chance we, as a society, have of choosing healthy and wise courses of action.
In this matter, as in most others, we do not want to idolize the past: there were some bad things in the good old days. Nor do should we condemn the past: tradition carries with it a great wisdom. But we can learn from the past. In this context, Ross Douthat writes:
Before the sexual revolution, a rigorous ethic of chastity and monogamy had seemed self-evidently commonsensical even to many non-Christians. What was moral was also practical, and vice versa; so long as sex made babies, it made sense that the truly safe sex was married. Scripture and tradition supplied the Christian view of marriage, but it was the fear of illegitimacy, abandonment, and disease that made the position nearly universally respected.
The fact that we fail to live up to our ideals should be taken as confirmation that our ideals are correct. Hypocrisy is an inevitable consequence to any attempt to live ethically. To be human is to be imperfect, flawed, sinful, or corrupt. If we strive to live as we ought, we will occasionally fail. This is true of Christians in the past, in the present, and in the future. It is true of most human beings, Christian or not. Our acknowledgement of moral standards is not invalidated by our inability to maintain those standards. Our unavoidable hypocrisy does, however, oblige us to be humble - which is why arrogance is viewed harshly by Scripture.
This respect was granted in the breach as often as in the observance. In 1940 as in 2000, most Americans - male and female alike - didn't go virginal to their marriage beds. But the web of prohibitions rooted in Christian teaching had a real impact nonetheless. Before the sexual revolution, Americans waited longer to have sex, had fewer sexual partners across the course of a lifetime (less than half as many, by some estimates), and were much more likely to see premarital lovemaking as a way station on the road to wedlock rather than an end unto itself. (According to one survey, 45 percent of Americans born around 1940 married the first person they slept with, compared to just 9 percent of Americans born around 1965.) The same pattern held once the marriage was forged: infidelity and divorce were hardly unknown, but in pre-1960s America more married couples made a sustained attempt - and faced sustained social pressure, obviously - to live up to the demanding precepts of the Gospel.
Marriage as an institutional is desirable and valuable. But what precisely is it? The word 'marriage' is commonly used, and most people who utter it are under the impression that they know what it means. Yet there are many misconceptions about it. For example, marriage is not primarily legal: the notion of civil marriage arises in history chronologically after the establishment of marriage. Logically and temporally, civil marriage is posterior to marriage itself. Governmental certification and recording of marriage is an administrative convenience which facilitates inheritance laws, taxation, and civil courtroom proceedings. But a legal marriage certificate is not a marriage. At best, it corresponds to the existence of a marriage and states the existence of that marriage. At worst, which is sadly more often the case, it generates the appearance of marriage where there is no marriage.
A couple can be married with no civil certification or record of the event, but mere civil certification or recording of a marriage does not mean that marriage exists: it does not mean that the couple is in fact married. Some, possibly many, couples aren't really 'married' in the truest sense of the word - i.e., a mutually supportive, respectful, and affectionate relationship with unconditional commitment to set the other's interest ahead of one's own. Such couples may well have a valid marriage license from the government, enjoy the legal, civil, and social status of a married couple, and have a grand wedding celebration in a church. But if a covenant relationship does not exist between husband and wife, and if that covenant is not understood as divinely instituted, then there is no marriage.
Marriage cannot be understood as a human construction, because humans are essentially imperfect and finite. The grade scale of the marriage covenant necessitates that it be superhuman in origin. In his commentary on the second chapter of Genesis, Martin Luther, contrasting the breeding of farm animals to human marriage, writes:
But among men the nature of marriage is different. There the wife so binds herself to a man that she will be about him and will live together with him as one flesh. If Adam had persisted in the state of innocence, this intimate relationship of husband and wife would have been most delightful. The very work of procreation also would have been most sacred and would have been held in esteem. There would not have been that shame stemming from sin which there is now, when parents are compelled to hide in darkness to do this. No less respectability would have attached to cohabitation than there is to sleeping, eating, or drinking with one's wife.
While Luther, in his idiosyncratic fashion, perhaps overstates the concept of shame in relation to sexuality, his points that sex, prior to the fall, is a holy and honorable activity, and that marriage has been damaged by the fall, stand. Sexual activity, in the context of a true marriage, is still honorable and holy; but the imperfection of the world and of the people in the world makes it persistently difficult for the human mind, heart, and will to conceptualize marital love and sex as that pure and holy thing. The mind of man is perpetually tempted to view marriage and sex through the lens of lust, and thereby see it as a shameful thing. In a fallen world, marriage can only exist through divine intervention.
Eve is brought to him by God Himself. Therefore just as God's will is ready to establish marriage, so Adam is ready to receive Eve with the greatest pleasure and innocency. Thus even now the bridegroom has a surpassing affection for the bride, yet it is contaminated by that leprous lust of the flesh which was not present in righteous Adam.
Luther again overemphasizes the fallen aspects of sexual desire. In fallen marriage, there is, to be sure, the danger of a man seeing sexual activity as merely the way in which his desires can be gratified. In the godly concept of marriage, sex is a celebration of the couple's mutual love and affection, and is a gift which each gives to the other.
But it is most worthy of wonder that when Adam looks at Eve as a building made from himself, he immediately recognizes her and says: "This now is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh." These are words, not of a stupid or a sinful human being who has no insight into the works and creatures of God, but of a righteous and wise being, one filled with the Holy Spirit. He reveals a wisdom hitherto unknown to the world: that the effecting cause of the wife and of marriage is God, but that the final cause is for the wife to be a mundane dwelling place to her husband. This knowledge is not simply the product of intelligence and reason; it is a revelation of the Holy Spirit.
Marriage, like the human soul, was created perfect and sinless, suffered damage in the fall, and is being restored by God. The fallen version of marriage - in which the option exists for one party to exploit or mistreat the other, in which betrayal and infidelity can occur, in which it is possible to be less than fully and affectionately supported and respected - this fallen manifestation of marriage often captures the world's attention, and falsely presents itself as true marriage, whereas it is in fact a damaged and counterfeit image of marriage.
True marriage is something to which no honest and intelligent person could object, and something which no honest or intelligent person, finding himself in such relationship, could want to leave. This is not to say that marriage is mandatory or to be universally required. There are some who are so constructed that lifelong virginity is a good fit for their mentalities. God has constructed each soul uniquely; not everyone should be married and not everyone should be single. It does seem that the overwhelming majority of humans are designed for marriage, and a relatively small percentage for lifelong celibacy.
But the point is this: marriage, properly understood, repaired by God from the damage sustained in the fall, and empowered by God to be something beyond the capabilities of human effort. Who could not find comfort, being in a relationship in which another has unconditionally pledged to devote his being to the effort to aid and assist? A woman who knows that her husband has constructed his life around his pledge to help and care for her; a man who knows that his wife directs her thoughts and activities toward supporting and respecting him; husband and wife know and rely on each other's absolute and unconditional faithfulness - to reject an institution of this nature would be irrational and masochistic.
The marriage of man and woman was divinely ordained. But how deformed it is now after sin! How our very flesh is kindled with passion! And so now, after sin, this union does not take place in public like a work of God; but respectable married people look for solitary places far away from from the eyes of men. Thus we have a body, but what a wretched one and how damaged in various ways! We also have a will and a reason, but how depraved in many ways!
A society or culture which loses this concept of marriage does infinite damage to itself and to its members. The New Testament quotes the Old no less than three times in this singular formulation: "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh."
Debates and discussions about the all-too-high divorce rate, or about the chimera of 'gay' marriage, are certainly necessary discussions to have. But we miss the point if we assume that merely reducing the divorce rate and avoiding the inhumanity of same-sex marriage is the goal. The goal is better and higher. The goal is to ensure that the institution of marriage is understood and embodied among us.
This begins, not by avoiding divorce, and not by avoiding gay marriage, but with those couples who are widely supposed - by themselves, by the government, and by others - to be married, who may have lived together for years, who may have children, and who may in fact deal with one another in a friendly fashion: this begins by ensuring that what appears to be marriage is in fact marriage. Whether a couple is already married, or whether they intend to be married, instruction about the nature of marriage is necessary; instruction, even better, for those who have not yet even met a potential spouse, instruction about the nature of marriage, so that they have a clear and correct concept of marriage when they do finally meet their future spouses. Problems of adultery and divorce would largely - though not entirely - be avoided by creating healthy and wise marriages in the first place.
The advantages to children of being raised by a truly married couple will be clear to the thoughtful reader; the disadvantages of illegitimate birth likewise obvious.
Those who worry about marriage and the state of society are correct to do so; society will naturally benefit as a consequence when more couples are in a true state of marriage. Instructing young men and women about what marriage is, and what it is not, is a necessary step. Understanding that a good marriage is not possible through human effort alone, but rather requires divine intervention, is also necessary; we may assume that such divine intervention also occurs in marriages among non-believers, or at least state clearly that there is no reason to assume that it does not exist. Addressing the intellect alone does not suffice; the heart and will must also be engaged. To that end, we petition the Holy Spirit.
