My posting last night on weddings [1] reminded me that I had thought to write recently about when we start a marriage, but had not written due to being sidetracked by so much else to do.  It is a subject of some interest to me, as the motivations for marriage and implications of deciding certain starting points relate to my own more general concerns about the relationship between church and state and the rather shaky reed of depending on government to support godly morality given the rather poor history of the state as a defender of righteousness.

Let us first look at some basic questions.  When does a marriage start?  The answer is not an entirely straightforward one, or at least not as straightforward as might be first believed.  We might be inclined to say “at the wedding,” but this only complicates matters.  Let us present several cases of actions and then ask the question of when the marriage starts, in a way that will allow us to see the complications of marriage and its beginning and its legitimacy.

First, let us examine the case of someone who has a wedding at the courthouse and then (may) later decide to have a church wedding officiated by a pastor.  When does the marriage start.  If the marriage starts at the Clerk of the Circuit Court, is that an admission that one’s actions with the state define the legitimacy of the marriage, and that a civil divorce would make someone unbound and free to marry?  The Bible does not suggest this (see, for example, Mark 10:1-12), showing that God and civil governments often have very different standards.  However, if we do not consider a civil union, apart from the religious ceremony that marks the covenant of two people marrying with divine sanction, as valid, this means that a civil union apart might not be sufficient for two people to marry in such a means so as to avoid committing fornication.  If the decisions of a civil government are irrelevant to the divine requirement of church sanction, then the possession of a civil union without prior or simultaneous divine sanction does not make the union licit, if we assume that a marriage ceremony is necessary to make a union legitimate.

This is not an idle matter of speculation.  In some countries (like Chile, for example) a civil union is required for marriages to be recognized by the state and is also required to be separate from any sort of religious ceremony.  Do we accept the date of the civil union as being the start of a marriage, or do we only consider a marriage valid if it has been blessed by God?  These are valid questions that rest on deeper concerns about marriage.  So therefore, let us ask a more fundamental question:  why is it that we get married at all?  What sort of recognized and licit unions exist, and why do we fuss so much about marriage anyway.

I cannot speak for everyone, but there are a few reasons why I believe people bother with marriage and some reasons why I seek an honorable marriage for myself.  First, I will speak for myself.  Why is it that I want to marry someone myself?  Marriage is a parity covenant between a man and a woman witnessed and enforced by God that mirrors the relationship that God has with believers in seeking genuine union and intimacy.  Though I have some very real difficulties with intimacy, that is a key aim of marriage.  Let us examine a few aspects of this understanding.  Marriage is a parity covenant—both of these elements are vitally important in understanding the appeal of marriage.  First, it is a covenant, not merely a contract (though it is this also) specifying mutual concerns and mutual obligations, but also a divinely sanctioned institution.  People marry in large part because they seek God’s blessing on their actions.  To do so requires that we marry by God’s standards, because we cannot expect divine blessing for engaging in relationships that He does not sanction (see, for example, Leviticus 18).

Additionally, it is important that marriage is a parity covenant as well.  The fact that marriage is a parity covenant means that it recognizes men and women as equal partners in the eyes of God, rather than enshrining domination by either gender over the other.  Marriage is not the means by which women have been reduced to slavery.  Quite the opposite—marriage has been the means of demonstrating the equality and worthiness of respect of women, the honor of children born with a spouse, and the requirement of the informed consent of both parties—for even if the husband is the head of the wife, she is his partner and not his subject in the eyes of God.

Why does this matter anyway?  For peoples throughout human history, there has been no legal recognition of their unions as legal in the first place.  This was the case with slaves in the antebellum South, as well as noncitizens in general in the Roman Empire [2].  The state conferred no legitimacy on their relations.  Did God recognize such unions, even without legal marriage, as legitimate?  That depends on whether you believe that concubinage is a valid (if lesser) biblically accepted union.  If so, then those who “shack up” nowadays, just like slave marriages of jumping over the broom in the antebellum South, as well as the marriages of the vast majority of early Christians, were legitimate in God’s eyes despite the lack of a legal union.  If not, then all of these people were fornicators in the eyes of God.

The Bible indicates that concubinage is a legitimate union in the eyes of God, though it is far lesser than that of marriage (see, for example, Romans 9:6-9, or Galatians 4:21-31, which depends on the superiority of marriage to concubinate to make its comparison of covenants, significantly).  There appear in general to be two types of concubinage.  One type is where a wealthy or a powerful person has a “kept woman” who is of a lower class and therefore an unsuitable spouse (see, for example, Solomon in 1 Kings 11:3).  The other type was an “informal marriage” where a man kept a hausfrau who was nonetheless not his wife, though still a legitimate if unequal partner (see, for example, Judges 19:1).  It is this second type of concubinage that is far more common in our world today.

We should note that this was not fornication, but simply a case where a man had an unequal relationship with a woman who was not protected by any covenant with God, but who still was “bound” to her husband (see Judges 19:2).  If a woman wishes to consider herself unequal to a man and live with him without the honor and protection and legitimacy of marriage, and considers herself unworthy of attaining the honor of a wife, that is her problem.  I would disagree with her selling herself so cheaply, but it is strictly her concern—she is not a fornicator, merely someone without a high estimation of her own worth.  Likewise, those in history whose unions were legal in God’s eyes without being legal in the eyes of mankind were similarly not fornicators, but merely denied the public recognition of their godly unions.  They were not made sinners simply because their governments did not recognize their unions as marriages.

This brings up the original question, though.  In whose eyes are we trying to be blessed when we marry in different fashions.  We may desire our relationships to be valid in God’s eyes, but it may be more important for us for our relationships to be above board in the eyes of our family or brethren (because clearly cohabitation is not above board in the eyes of many).  And yet some people may not be willing to wait for a marriage that is approved by their minister, which may involve significant counseling, and so they marry abruptly and secretly with a clerk of the circuit court, act like a married couple (“Woot, we’re legally married so now we can sleep together without fornicating.”), and consider themselves to be married in the eyes of God.  Is this acceptable?

I have my own opinions on the matter, but ultimately it is not my opinion that matters.  Of greater importance is what God thinks.  Do we have any idea about it, or are we so morally insensible that we believe that anything that will justify ourselves in our own eyes and that can avoid provoking open condemnation from friends, family, and ministry is acceptable in God’s eyes.  It is not my intention to poke into anyone’s bedroom affairs (which quite frankly are not my business), but rather to provoke thinking about the subject as a whole, at least so that we can have a consistent biblical standard to judge by rather than our own subjective bias or our own justification of any prior caving to our physical appetites.  Our actions have serious consequences, after all.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/a-wedding-party/

[2] James S. Jeffers, The Greco-Roman World Of The New Testament Era:  Exploring the Background of Early Christianity (Downers Grove, IL:  InterVarsityPress, 1999), 246.