Christian views on marriage

[5][6] Additionally, according to French anthropologist Philippe Rospabé, the payment of the bride price does not entail the purchase of a woman, as was thought in the early twentieth century.

[7] Like the adjacent Arabic culture (in the pre-Islamic period),[8] the act of marriage appears mainly to have consisted of the groom fetching the bride, although among the Israelites the procession was a festive occasion, accompanied by music, dancing, and lights.

The voice of God had said, "I hate divorce"[10]Theologian Frank Stagg says that manuscripts disagree as to the presence in the original text of the phrase "except for fornication".

Paul elevates singleness to that of the preferable position, but does offer a caveat suggesting this is "because of the impending crisis"—which could itself extend to present times (see also Pauline privilege).

[20][21] Some scholars have speculated that Paul may have been a widower since prior to his conversion to Christianity he was a Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin, positions in which the social norm of the day required the men to be married.

However, there was also an apocalyptic dimension in his teaching, and he was clear that if everybody stopped marrying and having children that would be an admirable thing; it would mean that the Kingdom of God would return all the sooner and the world would come to an end.

"[28]: p.151 Tertullian argued that second marriage, having been freed from the first by death,"will have to be termed no other than a species of fornication," partly based on the reasoning that this involves desiring to marry a woman out of sexual ardor, which a Christian convert is to avoid.

Marriage is a divine institution that can never be broken, even if the husband or wife legally divorce in the civil courts; as long as they are both alive, the Church considers them bound together by God.

[44] Thus usage of any form of contraception, in vitro fertilization, or birth control besides natural family planning is a grave offense against the sanctity of marriage and ultimately against God.

"[52] For example, the rite used in the Free Methodist Church proclaims that marriage is "more than a legal contract, being a bond of union made in heaven, into which you enter discreetly and reverently.

"[51] Roles and responsibilities of husband and wives now vary considerably on a continuum between the long-held male dominant/female submission view and a shift toward equality (without sameness)[53] of the woman and the man.

The divergent opinions fall into two main groups: Complementarians (who call for husband-headship and wife-submission) and Christian Egalitarians (who believe in full partnership equality in which couples can discover and negotiate roles and responsibilities in marriage).

[62] The standard formula for remarriage is that the Orthodox Church joyfully blesses the first marriage, merely performs the second, barely tolerates the third, and invariably forbids the fourth.

[71] Emanuel Swedenborg coined the term "conjugial" (rather than the more usual adjective in reference to marital union, "conjugal"[72][73]) to describe the special love experienced by married partners.

Yet, Protestants denominations and the Orthodox Church respond with compassion to deep hurts by recognizing that divorce, though less than the ideal, is sometimes necessary to relieve one partner of intolerable hardship, unfaithfulness or desertion.

"[134] According to this principle, there can be no moral or theological justification for permanently granting or denying status, privilege, or prerogative solely on the basis of a person's race, class, or gender.

[139] Much of the dispute hinges on how one interprets the New Testament household code (Haustafel), a term coined by Martin Luther, which has as its main focus hierarchical relationships between three pairs of social classes that were controlled by Roman law: husbands/wives, parents/children, and masters/slaves.

They maintain that the New Testament household code is an attempt by Paul and Peter to Christianize the concept of family relationships for Roman citizens who had become followers of Christ.

The Staggs write that there is some suggestion in scripture that because Paul had taught that they had newly found freedom "in Christ", wives, children, and slaves were taking improper advantage of the Haustafel both in the home and the church.

"The form of the code stressing reciprocal social duties is traced to Judaism's own Oriental background, with its strong moral/ethical demand but also with a low view of woman.... At bottom is probably to be seen the perennial tension between freedom and order.... What mattered to (Paul) was 'a new creation'[144] and 'in Christ' there is 'not any Jew not Greek, not any slave nor free, not any male and female'.

[148] Wayne Grudem criticizes commonly rendering kephalē in those same passages only to mean "source", and argues that it denotes "authoritative head" in such texts as Corinthians 11.

While "obey" was introduced into marriage vows for much of the church during the Middle Ages, its only New Testament support is found in Peter 3, with that only being by implication from Sarah's obedience to Abraham.

[159]Those of the egalitarian persuasion point to the biblical instruction that all Christian believers, irrespective of gender, are to submit or be subject "to one another in the fear of God"[160] or "out of reverence for Christ".

[183] According to Complementarian authors John Piper, Wayne Grudem, and others, historically, but to a significantly lesser extent in most of Christianity today, the predominant position in both Catholicism and conservative Protestantism places the male as the "head" in the home and in the church.

[188] This view holds that, "God has created men and women equal in their essential dignity and human personhood, but different and complementary in function with male headship in the home and in the Church.

"[191] Roman Catholic Church teaching on the role of women includes that of Pope Leo XIII in his 1880 encyclical Arcanum which states: The husband is the chief of the family and the head of the wife.

In the first century Roman Empire, in the time of Jesus, Paul, and Peter, it was the law of the land and gave the husband absolute authority over his wife, children, and slaves—even the power of life or death.

The marriage relationship simply reinforced this dominance of women by men, providing religious, cultural, and legal structures that clearly favor patriarchy to the exclusion of even basic human dignity for wives.

They believe such an attack includes the movement to "subvert the biblical model of the family, and redefine the very meaning of fatherhood and motherhood, masculinity, femininity, and the parent and child relationship.

[199] The patriarchists teach that "the woman was created as a helper to her husband, as the bearer of children, and as a "keeper at home", concluding that the God-ordained and proper sphere of dominion for a wife is the household.