Engaging the Doctrine of Marriage. Matthew Levering
of the marriage of God and his people, in chapter 2 I inquire into whether in the marriage of man and woman we find an “image of God” (Gen 1:26–27), as we might expect given the symbolic significance of marriage with regard to our ultimate destiny. If the image of God is found in the marital relationship of the man and the woman, then it seems that single people, including Jesus, would not be in the image of God. (Indeed, even married individuals would not be in the image of God, since they would only be the image of God as a couple.) Even so, some theologians, such as Matthias Joseph Scheeben and Pope John Paul II, have taught that the familial conjunction of man, woman, and child provides a valuable image of the Trinity, in its relational difference and fruitfulness. Karl Barth likewise proposes that the man-woman relationship, in its covenant-making relationality, is the “image of God.”
In my view, the position of Hans Urs von Balthasar on this topic works best. He argues that the male and female spouses, in their self-surrendering love that is fruitfully generative, give us a rich image of the fruitful generativity and selfless surrender that constitute the Persons of the Trinity. I suggest that even though von Balthasar’s understanding of the image requires the complementary insights of Augustinian-Thomistic theologies of the image, nonetheless he is on to something important about how marriage offers an “image of God.”29 In the fruitful self-surrender exemplified by a graced marriage, we perceive the ground for the analogous connection between human marriage and our eschatological sharing in the wondrous depths of the Trinitarian life.
Given that marriage sheds light upon our nuptial communion with God (and upon our nature as created in God’s image), chapter 3 pays attention to the fact that marriage is not absent from the act by which the first humans wounded their graced humanity. Does it matter that the first sin was committed by a married couple rather than by an individual human being? Surveying three recent commentaries on Genesis, I identify significant insights but not much attention to the sin of Adam and Eve specifically as a married couple. By contrast, for Ephrem the Syrian, John Chrysostom, and Augustine it greatly matters that the first sinners were a married couple. These Church Fathers perceive that given the purpose of creation—namely the eschatological marriage of God and creation—it makes sense that original sin consist in the fall not merely of individuals but of human solidarity itself, as found in the intimate communion of the first marriage. Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God disrupted their nuptial vocation in more ways than one.
Just as the marital context is important for understanding original sin as the fall of human solidarity, so also the effects of Christ’s Cross pertain to marriage. John Piper comments, “Marriage is woven into the wonder of the gospel of the cross of Christ.”30 Of course, a good marriage is not to be equated with the crucifixion of one or both spouses. But today we often minimize the self-sacrificial element required by a good marriage, despite the fact that the New Testament abounds with descriptions of life in Christ that insist upon the necessity of sharing in the Cross. To show how Christian marriage depends upon the Cross of Christ, my fourth chapter turns especially to the writings of Catherine of Siena and Karol Wojtyła (who became Pope John Paul II). These two saints help us to perceive why linking marriage to the redemptive Cross of Christ is not negative toward marriage as though marriage were a cross. Rather, fortified by the spouses cleaving to the Cross of Christ, marriage prepares for and already participates in the eschatological marriage of Christ and his Church. Put simply, as part of the restoration of fallen human solidarity, the spouses must be “configured to Christ’s ultimate priestly spousal act of self-donation on Calvary.”31
The book’s final three chapters address practical and sacramental issues that pertain to understanding what Christian marriage is.32 Chapter 5 is about identifying the purposes of marriage, which determine the kind of thing that marriage is or should be. I begin by describing the contrasting paths marked out by Plato and Aristotle. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that marriage is unnecessary among humans who are truly capable and wise. In his view (although scholars dispute whether Plato intends for us to take him literally), the best class of men and women should avoid marriage. Instead, they should have multiple sexual partners and should rely upon communal child-raising, so that parents will not know their children and vice versa. Socrates opposes marriage partly because it often elevates private family interests over the common good of the city. Aristotle strongly rejects Plato’s view and insists upon the goodness of marriage, especially for child-raising.
In light of these two contrasting perspectives, I discuss the “goods” and “ends” of marriage, as set forth by Augustine and John Chrysostom. I then turn to the more recent viewpoints of the Catholic scholars Dietrich von Hildebrand and Cormac Burke. Von Hildebrand proposes to distinguish the “primary meaning” of marriage (mutual love) from its “primary end” (procreation). For his part, Burke argues that procreation and the “good of the spouses” are two equal ends that should not be hierarchically ordered. In response to von Hildebrand and Burke, I contend—in accord with Aristotle and with the earlier Catholic tradition—that marriage has as its primary end (which cannot be distinguished from a “primary meaning”) the procreation and raising of children. As Donald Wallenfang puts it, “rooted in the intrinsic differences between male and female (and the procreative potential dependent upon these differences by nature), the basic concept of marriage signifies one man and one woman bound together for life to become husband and wife, father and mother.”33
In chapter 6, I take up the question of whether marriage truly is a sacrament instituted by Christ and intended to be one of seven sacraments of the Church. The Protestant Reformers rejected the Catholic (and Orthodox) view that marriage is a sacrament in this sense. Recently, Catholic scholars have also begun to call into question marriage’s status as a sacrament. As an example of this viewpoint, I examine the Catholic historian Philip Reynolds’s claim that in the twelfth century the Church invented the sacrament of marriage. Since a major part of the contemporary debate has to do with the question of doctrinal development, the chapter’s second section explores New Testament resources for thinking about doctrinal development, including the question of why Christ does not simply teach everything clearly from the outset. Third, I examine two extended historical-theological arguments in favor of the Church’s teaching that marriage is a sacrament, by Edward Schillebeeckx (writing in 1961) and Peter Elliott (writing in 1987). These authors hold that the key elements of marriage’s status as a sacrament are already in place in the New Testament, where it is clear that Jesus wills to heal and elevate the created reality of marriage within the supernatural order of grace. Schillebeeckx and Elliott help us to see that the Church’s twelfth-century affirmation of marriage as one of the seven sacraments did not simply come out of nowhere but rather represents an authentic development of Christian doctrine.
Having addressed the purposes of marriage and its location within the sacramental mediation of grace, my seventh and final chapter addresses the question of whether Christian marriage is actually good, either for the spouses themselves or for the just ordering of society. After beginning the chapter by examining the pro-marriage emphasis of the African American pastor Christopher Brooks and the social-justice concerns of Ta-Nehisi Coates, I treat a number of scholarly criticisms of Christian marriage. I also examine efforts to do without marriage (or at least without male-female marriage), such as when single women or homosexual couples choose to have a child by means of sperm donation or surrogacy.34 As a counterpoint to these critiques of or end-runs around Christian marriage, I survey in some detail the arguments of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, the sociologist David Popenoe, and the legal scholar Helen Alvaré. I argue that the presence of a father and a mother in the home—the establishment of stable families in which children are raised by their biological parents—is fundamental to the pursuit of social justice and the good of individuals and families. Without this foundation, the ability of persons and societies to participate in the eschatological marriage is deeply wounded, since the wounds caused by injustice impede the blossoming of selfless love, even though the merciful grace of the gospel can overcome these wounds.
These final three chapters are interrelated. The loss of awareness that procreation is the primary end or purpose of male-female marriage has assisted in the disintegration of marriage itself as a common practice. Even in places where divorce rates are relatively low, couples often do without marriage and so do not benefit from the sacrament of