VII
THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT
1. Marriage
The purpose of the seventh commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," is to protect marriage. It is important, therefore, to analyze the Biblical meaning of marriage in order to understand the significance of the laws governing its violation. The institution of marriage (Gen. 2:18-25) in Eden describes the meaning of marriage in relationship to man; this will be considered subsequently. At present, the meaning of marriage in relationship to God must first be understood and will be analyzed.
While marriage is of this earth, since there is no marrying nor giving in marriage in heaven (Matt. 22:29, 30), it nonetheless has reference to and is governed by the triune God, as are all things. The great statement of this fact is Ephesians 5:21-23, which begins with the general commandment, "Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God," rendered by the Berkeley Version, "Be submissive to one another out of reverence for Christ." Calvin commented on this:
God has bound us so strongly to each other, that no man ought to endeavor to avoid subjection; and where love reigns, mutual services will be rendered. I do not except kings and governors, whose very authority is held for the service of the community. It is highly proper that all should be exhorted to be subject to each other in their turn.1
Thus, a general principle of subjection and service is affirmed, and marriage is then cited as illustrative of this principle. As Hodge noted, "The apostle enjoins mutual obedience as a Christian duty, v.21. Under this head he treats of the relative duties of husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants."2 Man has through the ages been in revolt against this necessity. of. subjection and. service and dreamed rather of autonomous power. The young Louis XIV expressed his pleasure at the concept to the Duc de Gramont in 1661:
Louis: I have just been reading a book with which I am delighted.
1. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians, William Pringle Translation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), p.316 f.
2. Charles Hodge, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950), p.308.
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Gramont: What is that, Sire?
Louis: Calcandille. It pleases me to find in it arbitrary power in the hands of one man, everything being done by him or by his orders, he rendering an account of his acts to no man, and obeyed blindly by all his subjects without exception. Such boundless power is the closest approach to that of God. What do you think, Gramont?
Gramont: I am pleased that Your Majesty has taken to reading, but I would ask if he has read the whole of Calcandille?
Louis: No, only the preface.
Gramont: Well then, let Your Majesty read the book through, and when he has finished it, see how many Turkish Emperors died in their beds and how many came to a violent end. In Calcandille one finds ample proof that a Prince who can do whatever he pleases, should never be such a fool as to do so.3
With anarchism, this dream of autonomous power has become the hope of a large number of people.
This general principle of subjection and service is rooted in far more than men’s interdependence; rather, it is grounded in a theocratic faith. People are to be in subjection to one another, and in mutual service (Eph. 5:22-29), not because the needs of humanity require it but in the fear of God and in obedience to His law-word. The human interdependence exists because the prior dependence on God requires the unity of His creation under His law.
Moreover, because man is not God, man is a subject, a subject primarily and essentially to God, and to others in the Lord only. Where man rejects his subjection to God and asserts his autonomy, man does not thereby gain independence. The subjection of man to man continues in pagan, Marxist, Fabian socialist, anarchist, and atheistic groups, but this subjection is now without the restraint of God’s law. The Biblical subjection of man to man, and of a wife to her husband, is at every point governed and limited by the prior and absolute subjection to God, of which all other subjections are aspects. God’s prior and absolute lordship thus limits and conditions every situation of man and permits no trespass without offense. To deny the Biblical principle of subjection is thus to open the door to totalitarianism and tyranny, since no check then remains on man’s desire to dominate and use his fellow man. The Biblical principle of subjection conditions every relationship by the prior requirement and totally governing jurisdiction of God’s law, so that all relationships on earth are limited and restrained by God’s law-word. Thus, wives are not placed in bondage by the Biblical
3. W. H. Lewis, Assault on Olympus, The Rise of the House of Gramont between 1604 arid 1678 (New York: Harcourt, Brace’ and Company, 1958), p.151.
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commandment of submission (Eph. 5:22) but are rather established in the liberty and security of a God-ordained relationship.
Without Biblical faith, the only sustaining factor in marriage becomes the frail bond of feeling. Mary Carolyn Davies, in her poem, "A Marriage," wrote
Where feeling is the basis of marriage rather than a religious principle, then ultimately marriage becomes robbery, each partner using the other and then departing when there is nothing new to be gained. Again, Mary Carolyn Davies catches the materialistic impersonality of sexual relations when divorced from Biblical morality:
Romantic feelings, mutual exploitation and self-pity become the lot of those who reduce the man-woman relationship to one of anarchic liberty from God’s law.
The Biblical principle of subjection is hierarchical in that there are classes or levels of authority, but this does not mean that all levels are not directly and absolutely liable to God in terms of His law-word. According to St. Paul, "the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body" (Eph. 5:23). On this foundation principle, St. Paul adds, "Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let wives be to their own husbands in everything" (Eph. 5:24). The comment of the Right Rev. Alfred Barry on these verses is of interest here:
(23, 24).... The words "and" and "is" are wrongly inserted, and the word "therefore" is absolutely an error, evading the difficulty of
4. Mary Carolyn Davies, Marriage Songs (Boston: Harold Vinal, 1923), p.16.
5. Ibid., "They’ll Say-," p.13.
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the passage. It should be, He Himself being the Saviour of the Body. But. . . This clause, in which the words "He Himself" are emphatic, notes (as if in comparison) that "Christ" (and He alone) is not only Head, but "Saviour of the Body," i.e., "of His body the Church," not only teaching and ruling it, but by His unity infusing into it the new life of justification and sanctification. Here no husband can be like Him, and therefore none can claim the absolute dependence of faith which is His of right. Accordingly St. Paul adds the word, "but." Though "this is so," yet "still let the wives," etc.
The subjection of the Church of Christ is a free subjection, arising out of faith in His absolute wisdom and goodness, and love for His unspeakable love. Hence we gather (1) that the subordination of the wife is not that of the slave, by compulsion and fear, but one which arises from and preseryes freedom; next (2), that it can exist, or at any rate endure only on condition of superior wisdom and love in the husband thirdly (3), that while it is like the higher subordination in kind it cannot be equally perfect in degree -- while it is real in "everything," it can be absolute in nothing. The antitype is as usual greater than the type.6
This thoughtful statement misses the point of the passage in grounding the obedience on love rather than law. The obedience of the wife is not conditional upon the "superior wisdom and goodness and love in the husband"; there is nothing in the law to indicate this. Barry’s interpretation denies in effect that St. Paul’s statement is God’s law-word: it is rather presented as a description by Barry of marital relationships. Lenski is guilty of the same error. He comments, "This is also a voluntary self subjection and not subjugation."7 Certainly, the subjection of a wife to her husband is not slavery, nor involuntary subjugation. St. Paul is not concerned with the feelings, or the voluntarism of the wife: he is stating God’s law and setting forth its meaning. To discuss law without citing the fact that it is law is certainly strange exegesis. It requires a curious blindness.
What is meant by St. Paul is that the whole universe is one of submission to authority, and that the fulfillment of each and every aspect is to discharge its duties in terms of that submission. It is the place and fulfillment of the wife to be in submission to her husband in all due authority. Even as Christ is the head of the church and the savior of His body, the church, so the authority of the husband is to be exercised toward the health and furthering of his wife and family. Even as the church must submit to Christ, so the wife must submit to her husband "in every thing" (Eph. 5:24). Hodge commented on this phrase:
6. Alfred Barry, "Ephesians," in Ellicott, VIII, 52.
7. R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, to the Ephesians and to the Philippians (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1946, 1941), p. 625.
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As verse 22 teaches the nature of the subjection of the wife to her husband, and verse 23 its ground, this verse (24) teaches its extent. She is to be subject . . . in every thing. That is, the subjection is not limited to any one sphere or department of the social life, but extends to all. The wife is not subject as to some things, and independent as to others, but she is subject as to all. This of course does not mean that the authority of the husband is unlimited. It teaches its extent, not its degree. It extends over all departments, but is limited in all; first, by the nature of the relation; and secondly, by the higher authority of God. No superior, whether master, parent, husband or magistrate, can make it obligatory on us to do what God forbids, or not to do what God commands. So long as our allegiance to God is preserved, and obedience to man is made part of our obedience to him, we retain our liberty and our integrity.8
In a world without submission to law and to authorities under law, very quickly only lawless force would prevail, and nothing could be more destructive of a woman’s welfare, or a man’s, for that matter. The world of God’s law and God-ordained authorities is our true liberty. It is only when we first establish the primacy of that law and authority that we can, with Barry and Lenski, speak of that voluntary submission to law and authority as man’s happiness and fulfillment. Here the matter is best stated by Ingram, who begins with the law and sees the assent as assent to law:
Public witness to mutual consent and pledges of troth: these are the things that make a marriage.
The integrity of the whole moral argument of the Ten Commandments begins to stand out even more clearly in this. The mystery of making and keeping a pledge of loyalty, a promise, to God, to a spouse; the taking of the name of God in a solemn oath: these are the things upon which the moral law is built. These are the foundations of society. These are the things that are kept alive and in force by the inflicting of penalties for breaking them. Promises, vows, pledges, loyalties all vanish if they are broken with impunity. Society turns on keeping pledges and punishing violations. Credit is an extension of the principle into the business world. The contract is established by a spoken word, and is no better than that word. The bond of loyalty or the effect of a pledge lies in what we might call the spirit world: it has no shape or weight or size; it cannot be touched, seen, or heard. But it controls human life.
What an adulterer really does is to break a particular solemn vow. By his act he tramples upon marriage itself, mocks God and society, and figuratively tosses that particular promise into the trash can, making it of no value.9
God makes certain promises and threats to man and society con-
8. Hodge. Ephesians, p. 314 f.
9. T. R. Ingram, The World Under God’s Law, p.84.
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ditional upon the fulfillment or violation of His law-word. Man’s studied disregard of that law-word is an implicit or explicit declaration that man replaces God’s authority with his own, that moral submission is denied in favor of autonomy.
The alternative to submission is exploitation, not freedom, because there is no true freedom in anarchy. The purpose of submission is not to degrade women in marriage, nor to degrade men in society, but to bring to them their best prosperity and peace under God’s order. In a world of authority, the submission of the wife is not in isolation nor in a vacuum. It is set in a context of submission by men to authority; in such a world, men teach the principles of authority to their sons and to their daughters and work to instill in them the responsibilities of authority and obedience. In such a world, inter-dependence and service prevail.
In a world of moral anarchism, there is neither submission to authority nor service, which is a form of submission. A husband and father who uses his authority and his income wisely to further the welfare of the entire family is serving the welfare of all thereby. But in a world which denies submission and authority, every man serves himself only and seeks to exploit all others. Men exploit women, and women exploit men. If the woman ages, she is abandoned. If the man’s income wanes, he is deserted if a better opportunity presents itself. The "jet set" world, and the arena of the theatre, provide us with abundant examples of the fact that the world of anarchism and lawlessness, i.e., the world outside God’s law insofar as submission is concerned, is a world of exploitation, in particular, of sexual exploitation.
Another significant fact appears in St. Paul’s Ephesian declaration: although Scripture repeatedly assumes and cites love as an aspect of a woman’s relationship to her husband, love is not cited here by St. Paul with reference to the wife and her reaction to her husband. The primacy is given to submission by the wife, and love by the husband. The husband’s love, however, is defined as service, and it is compared to the redemptive work of Christ for His Church (Eph. 5:22-29). Thus, the husband’s evidence of love is his wise and loving government of his household, whereas the wife demonstrates her love in submission. In both cases, submission and authority are not by the wishes of the parties involved, but by the law-word of God. Where the submission and authority are premised on God’s law, that submission and authority interpenetrate. The husband submits to Christ and to all due authority, and the wife submits to her husband and thereby furthers his exercise of authority in every realm and becomes her husband’s help-meet in his authority and dominion. The wife normally derives her status from her husband, and to undercut him is to undercut herself.
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Similarly, "men ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church" (Eph. 5:28, 29). The basis of such a relationship is faith, and obedience by faith to God’s law-word. Authority and law are not essentially physical things but primarily of the spirit; where men recognize the religion and faith which establishes authority, there the physical manifestations of authority are respected. If the religious foundations of authority are broken, then that authority rapidly crumbles and disappears. Thus, very little policing is necessary in India to keep Hindus on a vegetarian diet, since that diet is undergirded by the strictest religious faith, but it would be virtually impossible to impose such a diet on Americans today.
When the Biblical faith which undergirds Western family life is denied, then the nature of the marital relationship is also altered. The humanistic relativism of modern man dissolves the ties between man and woman as far as any objective law and value are concerned and reduces them to purely relative and personal ties. Now a purely personal tie is impersonal in its view of other people. A man whose judgment is governed by his personal considerations only, does not consider the personal considerations of other people, except insofar as they can be used to further his own ends. As a result, an externalism prevails. Thus, the coarse humanist, Thomas More, advocated in Utopia that young people view each other in the nude before deciding to marry. When Sir William Roper praised this aspect of Utopia and asked that it be applied to More’s two daughters, whom he was courting, More took Roper to the bedroom where the two girls were asleep together, "on their backs, their smocks up as high as their armpits. More yanked off the cover, and the girls modestly rolled over. Roper slapped one on her behind, stating, "I have seen both sides; thou art mine."10 The fact that Roper had a happy marriage does not alter the fact of the basic coarseness of both father and husband. Had not Roper and his wife both had a background of strict Catholic faith, the results would not have been as happy.
The externalism of the anarchist is alien to the hierarchy of authority that is basic to God’s law-order. That authority rests on a doctrine of God, and, with respect to marriage, a central aspect of the meaning of marriage is that it is a type of Christ and His church (Eph. 5:25-32). In Ephesians 3:14, 15, St. Paul speaks of God as the Father of all families in heaven and earth, or, more literally, the "Father of all father-hoods" according to Simpson:
God Himself is the archetype of parentage, faintly adumbrated by
10. Aubrey’s Brief Lives (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1957), pp.212-214.
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human fatherhood. From His creative hand have proceeded all rational beings in all their multiplicity of aspects and manners and usages, divergent or interrelated. To the "Father of Spirits" they owe their existence and the conditions that have stamped it with both an individual and collective impress, an actual or potential scope and orbit.11
James Moffatt’s translation renders this passage thus, "For this reason, then, I kneel before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name and nature." The name and nature of all earthly relationships is derived from the triune God, so that there is no law, no society, no relationship, no justice, no structure, no design, no meaning apart from God and all these aspects and relationships of society are type of that which exist in the Godhead. Hell has none of these meanings, but bare existence, which is itself God’s creation. For men to deny God is to deny ultimately everything, since all things are from God and testify to Him.
According to Simpson, the typology of marriage and its relationship to Christ and the church has four implications. First, it sets forth the fact of dominion, which is basic to God’s purpose and His kingdom. Second, it has reference to devotion or self-sacrifice. Third, it is in terms of a design, a sovereign purpose and destiny. Fourth, it declares the derivation. 12
The "one flesh" described by St. Paul does not mean, as Hodge pointed out, an "identity of substance, but community of life."13 Just as hell is the final and total loss of all community, so true marriage, like every aspect of the godly life, is a realization of a phase of life in community under God. St. Paul, in citing Genesis 2:24 in Ephesians 5:31, makes clear that he has simply made clear to the Church of Ephesus that which was declared from the beginning. The "great mystery" spoken of by St. Paul in Ephesians 5:32 is, according to Calvin, "that Christ breathes into the church his own life and power."14 Where this life and power are received faithfully, and each authority, receiving God’s grace directly and also as mediated through all due authorities, discharges its duties of submission and authority faithfully, there God’s kingdom flourishes and abounds. With respect to salvation and God’s providence, Christ is the only mediator between God and man. But God’s grace moves not directly from God to man through Christ, but also through man to man as they discharge their duties under God. What covenant member with godly parents
11. E. K. Simpson in E. K. Simpson and F. F. Bruce, Commentary on the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957), p.79.
12. Ibid., pp.130-134.
13. Hodge, Ephesians, p. 346.
14. Calvin, Galatians and Ephesians, p.326.
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can deny that his parents, by their prayers and their discipline, their love and their teaching, did not reveal God’s grace and law-order to them? The fact that their salvation is entirely the work of God does not alter the reality of the covenantal instruments. That covenantal instruments are instruments in God’s hands must clearly be recognized, but to deny them even that status is to deny God’s order. Pastors, parents, teachers, civil authorities, and all others, as they discharge their duties under God faithfully, mediate from man to man God’s order, justice, law, grace, word, and purpose. Clearly and without any doubt, "there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (I Tim. 2:5). Protestantism has rightly upheld the exclusiveness of that mediation, but, it must be added, it has done harm by denying often that there is a mediation between men. A godly state, which applies God’s law-order faithfully and carefully, clearly mediates God’s justice to evil-doers and His care to His own. It is for this reason that Scripture refers to authorities to whom the word of God is given, i.e., who are established as authorities by God’s word, as "gods," because they set forth or mediate an aspect of God’s order (John 10:34, 35). The alternative to mediation is anarchism, nor will it do to quibble at the word "mediation" until the dictionaries are altered.
Every legitimate area of administration is an area of mediation, whereby Christ’s law-order is mediated through church, state, school, family, vocation, and society. To administer is to mediate, because an administrator applies not his own but a higher rule to the situation under his authority. This clearly means a hierarchy of authorities, and the higher rule or standard of all hierarchies as of all men is the Bible, God’s enscriptured word.
What the Biblical doctrine of marriage makes clear is that, in life’s most intimate relationships, the law-order of God not only governs every relation but is the ground of the happiness and prosperity thereof.
That Christ Himself in His incarnation confirmed the necessity of submission and the validity of authority by His own example, the New Testament abundantly testifies. To this fact also a Collect of the Mass for the Feast of the Holy Family gives beautiful witness:
O Lord Jesus Christ, Who, being subject to Mary and Joseph, didst sanctify home life with unspeakable virtues: grant, that, by the aid of both, we may be taught by the example of Thy Holy Family, and attain to eternal fellowship with it: Who livest and reignest with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, World without end. Amen.
2. Marriage and Man
Man can be understood only in terms of God and His sovereign
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purpose in man’s creation. According to Genesis 1:26-28, man was created to exercise dominion over the earth and to subdue it, and the command to "be fruitful, and multiply" was an aspect of the call to exercise dominion over the earth. Man therefore is to be understood in terms of God’s kingdom and man’s calling therein to manifest God’s law-order in a developed and subdued earth.
Man is thus primarily and essentially a religious creature who is truly understood only by reference to his Creator and his ordained destiny under God. Man’s destiny, to bring all things under the dominion of God’s law-word, confronted man from the beginning of his creation. To subdue the earth and exercise dominion over it, as the task was assigned to Adam in Eden, had two aspects. First, the practical aspect: man was required to take care of the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:15). Urban man tends to forget that fruit trees, vegetables, and plants require work and care, even in the perfect world of Eden. Adam was given the responsibility of dressing or tilling the garden and keeping or taking charge of it. Second, the cognitive aspect: man was required to name the creatures. Names in the Old Testament are descriptions and classifications, so that to name anything meant to understand and classify it. By work and knowledge man was called to subdue the earth, develop its potentialities, increase and multiply in order to extend his dominion geographically as well as in knowledge.
This then was man’s holy calling under God, work and knowledge toward the purpose of subduing the earth and exercising dominion over it. Thus, any vocation whereby man extends his dominion, under God, to God’s purpose, and without abuse of or contempt for the earth God has ordained to be man’s domain under Him is a holy calling. The common opinion in every branch of Christendom that a Christian calling means entrance into the ranks of the clergy could not be more wrong. Such an attitude leads to the supplanting of the Kingdom of God by the church, to ecclesiasticism as God’s purpose in creation.
Thus, man was created, not as a child, so that he cannot be understood with reference either to a primitive past or to his childhood, but in terms of mature responsibility and work. Man realizes himself in terms of work under God, and hence the radical destructiveness to man of meaningless or frustrating work, or of a social order which penalizes the working man in the realization of the fruits of his labors. Similarly, man realizes himself as he extends the frontiers of his knowledge and learns more of the nature of things and their utility as well. Men find an exaltation in a task well done, and in knowledge gained, because in and through work and knowledge their dominion under God is extended.
The earth thus was created to be God’s kingdom, and man was created
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in God’s image to be God’s vicegerent over that realm under God. The image of God involves knowledge (Col. 3:10), righteousness, and holiness (Eph. 4:24), and dominion over the earth and its creatures (Gen. 1:28). Thus, while Adam was shaped out of dust, or the topsoil, the red earth, he was still ordained to a glorious nature and destiny under God.
Man was required to know himself first of all in terms of his calling before he was given a help-meet, Eve. Thus, not until Adam, for an undefined but apparently extensive length of time, had worked at his ca1ling, cared for the garden and come to know the creatures thereof, was he given a wife. We are specifically told that Adam named or classified all the animals, a considerable task, prior to the creation of Eve. However general and limited this classification was, it was still an accurate and over-all understanding of animal life. The Adam of Eden was thus a hard-working man in a world where the curse of sin had not yet infected man and his work.
Thus it must be noted that Adam was given Eve, first, not in fulfillment of a natural or merely sexual need, although this was recognized (Gen. 2:20), but, after delay, in fulfillment of his need for a "helpmeet," which is what Eve is called. She is thus very clearly a helper to Adam in his life and work as God’s covenant man, called to exercise dominion and subdue the earth.
This means, second, that the role of the woman is to be a helper in a governmental function. Man’s calling is in terms of the Kingdom of God, and woman’s creation and calling is no less in terms of it. She is a helper to man in the subduing of the earth and in exercising dominion over it in whatever terms necessary to make her husband’s life and work more successful. The implications of this will be discussed later in relationship to woman in marriage.
Third, God created Eve only after Adam had proven himself responsible by discharging his duties faithfully and well. Responsibility is thus clearly a prerequisite to marriage for the man. Hence, later, the dowry system required the bridegroom to demonstrate his responsibility by turning over a dowry to the bride as her security, and the children’s security, for the future.
Fourth, since man is called to exercise dominion, and marriage and his government of the family is a central aspect of that dominion, the exercise of dominion in work and knowledge precedes the exercise of dominion as husband and father. The covenant family is central to the Kingdom of God and hence marriage was at its inception hedged about with safeguards in order to establish the precedent of responsibility.
Fifth, marriage is clearly a divine ordinance, instituted, together with the calling to work and to know, in paradise.
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Sixth, marriage is the normal state of man, for, according to God, "It is not good that the man should be alone" (Gen. 2:18). Unless men are physically incapacitated, or else called by God to the single estate (Matt. 19:10-12) marriage is their normal state of life. Only in an age of studied immaturity do men mock at marriage. What they are saying, in effect, is that responsibility, or more simply, manhood, is bondage and permanent childhood freedom. Such persons are not worth answering.
Seventh, while the family and dominion therein are a part of man’s calling and a very important part thereof, it is far from being the totality of his calling. Whereas the woman’s calling is in terms of her husband and the family, the man’s calling is in terms of the vocation he assumes under God.
Eighth, man, before marriage, is called, as we have seen, to demonstrate two things, the pattern of obedience and the pattern of responsibility, and he is then ready to establish a new home. Genesis 2:24 makes clear that a man shall leave his parental home and cleave unto his wife. Basic to the development of man’s dominion over the earth are change and growth. Family systems which do not permit the independence of the young couple seek to perpetuate an unchanging order, whereas change and growth are ensured by the Biblical pattern which requires a break with parents at marriage. The break does not end responsibility to parents, but it ensures independent growth.
Ninth, the Hebrew word for bridegroom means "the circumcised;" the Hebrew word for father-in-law means he who performed the operation of circumcision, and the Hebrew word for mother in law is similar. This obviously had no reference to the actual physical rite since Hebrew males were circumcised on the eighth day. What it meant was that the father-in-law ensured the fact of spiritual circumcision, as did the mother-in-law, by making sure of the covenantal status of the groom. It was their duty to prevent a mixed marriage. A man could marry their daughter, and become a bridegroom only when clearly a man under God.
Thus the parents of the bridegroom had an obligation to prepare their son for a life of work and growing knowledge and wisdom, and the parents of the bride had a duty, under Biblical standards, to examine the faith and character of the prospective bridegroom.
Maturity thus is not only basic to manhood but also to marriage. The maturity required is more than physical maturity. In other eras, marriages have often been contracted in the early teens, as in some frontier situations, but in many such cases the males were experienced and working men, the girls trained and capable women, whereas in other eras immaturity is the chronic and chosen condition of men and
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women. Certainly, physical maturity is wisest, but without a maturity of faith and character the marital relationship is plagued with conflicts and tensions.
Since marriage is so closely linked from creation with God’s covenant with man, it is especially fitting that the Roman Catholic service, in the Blessing which concludes the Marriage Mass, should invoke the Old Testament covenant phrase. In the wording of the New Saint Andrew Bible Missal,
May the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob be with you, and may he fulfill in you his blessing, so that you may see your children’s children to the third and fourth generation and afterward possess everlasting and boundless life. Through the help of our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, God, forever and ever. Amen.
Finally, it must be noted that, while marriage is the ordained sexual relationship between man and woman, it cannot be understood simply in terms of sex. When marriage is reduced to sex, then marriage disintegrates as an institution and amoral sex replaces it. Marriage has reference first of all to God’s ordination and then to man and to woman in their respective callings. Because man is to be understood in terms of his calling under God, all of man’s life is to be interpreted in terms of this calling also. Dislocation in a man’s calling is a dislocation in his total life. When work is futile, men cannot rest from their labors, because their satisfaction therein is gone. Men then very often seek to make work purposeful by working harder. Frustration in terms of his calling means poor health for man in terms of his physical and mental health, his sexual energy, and his ability to rest, whereas success in work means vigor and vitality to a man. Every attempt to understand marriage only in terms of sex will aggravate man’s basic problem.
If marriage cannot be reduced to sex, neither can it be reduced to love. The Scripture gives no ground whatsoever to the idea that a marriage can be terminated when love ends. While love is important to a marriage, it cannot replace God’s law as the essential bond of marriage. Moreover, a woman can make no greater mistake than to assume that she can take priority in her husband’s life over his work. He will love her with a personal warmth and tenderness as no other person, but a man’s life is his work, not his wife, and the failure of women to understand this can do serious harm to a marriage. The tragedy of an apostate age is that women see the futility or emptiness of much of man’s work, but they fail to see that a godly man’s answer to a sick world is more work. Because work is man’s calling, men often make the serious mistake of trying to solve all problems by working harder, whereas, in the same situation, the woman is all the more con-
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vinced of the futility of work. But to tell a man that work is futile is to tell him that he is futile. A basic and unrecognized cause of tensions in marriage is the growing futility of work in an age where apostate and statist trends rob work of its constructive goals. The area of man’s dominion becomes the area of man’s frustration. There are those who can recall when men, not too many years ago, worked ten hours or more daily, six and seven days a week, often under ugly and unsafe circumstances. In the face of this, they could rest and also enjoy life with a robust appetite. The basic optimism of that era and the certainty of progress, the stability of a hard money economy, and the sense of mastery in these assurances, gave men a satisfaction in their labors which made rest possible. An age which negates the meaning and satisfaction of work also negates man at the same time. Not all the more desirable conditions and hours of work can replace the purpose of work. Dostoyevsky pointed out that men could be broken in Siberia, not by hard labor but by meaningless labor, such as moving a pile of boulders back and forth endlessly. Such work, however slowly or lazily done, destroys a man, whereas meaningful work strengthens and even exalts him.
Because of the centrality of work to a man, one of the chronic problems of men is their tendency to make work a substitute religion. Instead of deriving the meaning of life from God and His law-order, men often derive their private world of meaning from their work. The consequence is a disorientation of life, family, and order.
Whether retired or actively working, a man’s thinking is still in terms of the world of work, and he continues to assess reality in the same terms. Man, having been called to exercise dominion through work, is tied to work in thought and action alike. But there is no true dominion for man in and through work apart from God and His law-order.
A final note: men have through the centuries felt so closely linked to their work, that for them there has been a particular satisfaction in being near their tools. To this day, in some parts of the world, men take pleasure in having their tools close at hand. Some resistance to the Industrial Revolution came from men who enjoyed having their workshop in their home and felt a loss at moving into other premises. Not uncommonly, doctors carry their little black bags with them on a vacation, and a high point of a European tour for one doctor was the opportunity to use his medicine. Many men rest better if their tools are close at hand.
3. Marriage and Woman
The definition of woman given by God in creating Eve and establish-
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ing the first marriage is "help meet" (Gen. 2:18). This is literally "as agreeing to him," or "his counterpart."1 Robert Young’s Literal Translation of the Holy Bible renders it "an helper-as his counterpart." R. Payne Smith pointed out that the Hebrew is literally, "a help as his front, his reflected image."2 The implication is of a mirrored image, a point made by St. Paul in I Corinthians 11:1-16; man was created in God’s image, and woman in the reflected image of God in man. In this passage, as Hodge noted, the principle is affirmed "that order and subordination pervade the whole universe, and is essential to its being."3 The covered head is a sign of being under authority to another person; hence, the man, who is directly under Christ, worships with uncovered head, the woman with a covered head. A man therefore who worships with covered head dishonors himself (I Cor. 11:1-4). The uncovered woman might as well be shorn or shaven, because it is as shameful for her to be uncovered as to be shaven (I Cor. 11:5-7). As Leon Morris notes with reference to vss. 8, 9, "Neither in her origin, nor in the purpose for which she was created can the woman claim priority, or even equality."4
Accordingly, St. Paul continued, "For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels" (I Cor. 11:10). James Moffatt rendered "power on her head" as "a symbol of subjection," following thereby popular opinion rather than the Greek text. "Power on her head" means rather, as Morris and others have pointed out, "a sign of her authority."5 Because angels are witnesses, a godly witness must be rendered. To many, a serious contradiction seems to be involved here: first, St. Paul insists on subordination, and then, second, speaks of what seems to to be a sign of subordination as a sign of authority. This seeming contradiction arises from the anarchic concept of authority which is so deeply imbedded in man’s sinful nature. All true authority is under authority, since God alone transcends all things and is the source of all power and authority. A colonel has authority because he is under a general, and his own authority grows as the power, prestige, and authority of those above him grow, and his unity with them in mind and purpose is assured. So too with the woman: Her subordination is also her symbol of authority. Very frequently, in various societies, prostitutes have been forbidden to dress themselves in the same manner as wives and daughters, for to do so
1. H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis (Columbus, Ohio: Wartburg Press, 1942), p. 129f.
2. R. Payne Smith, "Genesis," in Ellicott, I, 21.
3. Charles Hodge, An Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950), p.206.
4. Leon Morris, The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: (Eerdmans, 1958), p. 153.
5. Ibid., p. 153 f.
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would be to claim an authority, protection, and power they had forfeited. Thus, in Assyria an unmarried prostitute who covered her head was severely punished for her presumption.6 Similar laws existed in Rome. On the American frontier, the woman who was a wife or daughter carried an obvious authority and normally commanded the respect and protection of all men.
Men and women, St. Paul declared (I Cor. 11:11), are "mutually dependent. The one cannot exist without the other."7 "The one is not without the other, for as the woman was originally formed out of the man, so the man is born of the woman."8 Church councils very early censured long hair in men as a mark of effeminacy, as had the Romans before them. There is no evidence to support the usual portrayal of Christ and the apostles as long-haired men; the evidence of the age indicates very short hair.
To a woman, however, in all ages and countries, long hair has been considered an ornament. It is given to her, Paul says, as a covering, or as a natural veil; and it is a glory to her because it is a veil. The veil itself, therefore, must be becoming and decorous in a woman.9
It is thus with Biblical grounds that a woman’s hair is spoken of as her "crowning glory," and her delight in wearing it as an attractive crown is God-given when done within bounds, although the time some give to it is certainly not so.
The Biblical doctrine of woman thus reveals her as one crowned with authority in her "subjection" or subordination, and clearly a helper of the closest possible rank to God’s appointed vicegerent over creation. This is no small responsibility, nor is it a picture of a patient Griselda. Theologians have all too often pointed to Eve as the one who led Adam into sin while forgetting to note that her God-given position was such that counsel was her normal duty, although in this case it was clearly evil counsel. Men as sinners often dream of a patient Griselda who never speaks unless spoken to, but no other wife would please them less or bore them more. Martin Luther, who dearly loved his Katie, on one occasion vowed, "If I were to marry again, I would hew a meek wife out of stone: for I doubt whether any other kind be meek." His biographer, Edith Simon, properly asks, "How would he have fared with a meek wife?"10 The answer clearly is, not too well.
It is a common illusion that in man’s primitive, evolutionary past,
6. J. M. Powis Smith, The Origin and History ol Hebrew Law (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1931, 1960), p. 231 f.
7. Charles Hodge, I Corinthians, p.211.
8. Ibid., p.212.
9. Ibid., p.213.
10. Edith Simon, Luther Alive (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1968), p.336.
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women were the merest slaves, used at will by primitive brutes. Not only is this evolutionary myth without foundation, but in every known society, the position of women, as measured in terms of the men and the society, has been a notable one. The idea that women have ever submitted to being mere slaves is itself an absurd notion. Women have been women in every age. In a study of an exceedingly backward society, the natives of Australia, Phyllis Kaberry has shown the importance and status of women to be a considerable one.11
Few things have depressed women more than did the Enlightenment, which turned woman into an ornament and a helpless creature. Unless of the lower class, where work was mandatory, the "privileged" woman was a useless ornamental person, with almost no rights. This had not been previously true. In 17th-century England, women were often in business, were highly competent managers, and were involved in the shipping trade, as insurance brokers, manufactures, and the like.
Up to the eighteenth century women usually figured in business as partners with their husbands, and not in inferior capacities. They often took full charge during prolonged absences of their mates. In some instances, where they were the brighter of the pair, they ran the show.12
A legal "revolution" brought about the diminished status of women; "the all too familiar view of women suddenly emerging in the nineteenth century from a long historical night or to a sunlit plain is completely wrong."13 A .knowledge of early American history makes clear the high responsibilities of the woman; New England sailing men could travel on two and three year voyages knowing that all business at home could be ably discharge by their wives.
The Age of Reason saw man as reason incarnate, and woman as emotion and will and therefore inferior. The thesis of the Age of Reason has been that the government of all things should be committed to reason. The Age of Reason opposed the Age of Faith self-consciously. Religion was deemed to be woman’s business, and, the more the Enlightenment spread, the more church life came to be the domain of women and children. The more pronounced therefore the triumph of the Age of Reason in any culture, the more reduced the role of women became. Just as religion came to be regarded as a useless but sometimes charming ornament, so too women were similarly regarded.
These ideas moved into the United States through the influence of Sir William Blackstone on law, who in turn was influenced by England’s
11. Phyllis M. Kaberry, Aboriginal Woman, Sacred and Profane (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1939).
12. Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia F. Farnham, M.D., Modern Woman, The Lost Sex (New York: Harper, 1947), p.130.
13. Ibid., p.421.
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Chief Justice Edward Coke, a calculating opportunist. As a result, the law books of the first half of the 19th-century showed woman in a diminished role. Three examples of this are revealing:
Walker’s Introduction to American Law: The legal theory is, marriage makes the husband and wife one person, and that person is the husband. There is scarcely a legal act of any description that she is competent to perform . . . . In Ohio, but hardly anywhere else, is she allowed to make a will, if happily she has anything to dispose of.
Roper’s Law of Husband and Wife: It is not generally known, that whenever a woman has accepted an offer of marriage, all she has, or expects to have, becomes virtually the property of the man thus accepted as a husband; and no gift or deed executed by her between the period of acceptance and the marriage is held to be valid; for were she permitted to give away or otherwise settle her property, he might be disappointed in the wealth he looked to in making the offer.
Wharton’s Laws: The wife is only the servant of her husband.14
There is an extremely significant clause in Roper’s statement: "It is not generally known. . . ." The full implications of the legal revolution were not generally known. Unfortunately, they did come to be generally supported, by men. Even more unfortunately, the churches very commonly supported this legal revolution by a one-sided and twisted reading of Scripture. The attitude of men generally was that women were better off being left on a pedestal of uselessness. At a women’s rights conference, one speaker answered these statements, Sojourner Truth, a tall, colored woman, prominent in anti-slavery circles and herself a former slave in New York state. She was 82 years of age, had a back scarred from whippings, could neither read nor write, but had "intelligence and common sense." She answered the pedestal advocates powerfully and directly, speaking to the male hecklers in the audience:
Wall, chilern, whan dar is so much racket dar must be somethin’ out of kilter. I tink dat ‘twixt de niggers of de Souf and de womin at de Norf, all talkin’ ‘bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all dis here talkin’ ‘bout?
Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to hab de best place everywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gibs me any best place! And a’n’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! . . .
I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And a’n’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man-when I could get it-and bear de lash as’
14. Charles Neilson Gattey, The Bloomer Girls (New York: Coward-McCann, 1968), p.21.
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well! And a’n’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and se~n ‘em mos’ all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And a’n’t I a woman?
Den dat little man in black dar, he say womin can’t have as much rights as men, ‘cause Christ wan’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? ...
Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothin’ to do wid Him.
‘Bleeged to ye for hearin’ me, and now ole Sojourner han’t got nothin’ more to say.15
The tragedy of the women’s rights movement was that, although it had serious wrongs to correct, it added to the problem, and here the resistance of man was in as large a measure responsible. Instead of restoring women to their rightful place of authority beside man, women’s rights became feminism: it put women in competition with men. It lead to the masculinzation of women and feminization of men, to the unhappiness of both. Not surprisingly, in March, 1969, Paris courturier Pierre Cardin took a logical step in his menswear collection show: "the first garment displayed was a sleeveless jumper designed to be worn over high vinyl boots. In other words, a dress."16
Thus, the age of Reason brought in an irrational supremacy for men and has led to a war of the sexes. As a result, the laws today work, not to establish godly order, but to favor one sex or another. The laws of Texas reflect the older discrimination against women; the laws of some states (such as California) show a discrimination in favor of women.
To return to the Biblical doctrine, a wife is her husband’s help-meet. Since Eve was created from Adam and is Adam’s reflected image of God, she was of Adam and an image of Adam as well, his "counter-part." The meaning of this is that a true help-meet is man’s counterpart, that a cultural, racial, and especially religious similarity is needed so that the woman can truly mirror the man and be his image. A man who is a Christian and a businessman cannot find a helper in a Buddhist woman who believes that nothingness is ultimate and that her husband’s way of life is a lower way. Cross-cultural marriages are thus normally a failure. Where we do find such marriages, they prove often on examination to be the union of two humanists whose backgrounds vary but whose faith unites them. Even then, such marriages have a high mortality. A man can identify character within his culture, but he cannot do more than identify the general character of another culture. Thus, a German reared in a Lutheran atmosphere can discern the subtle differences among women in his society, but if he marries a Moslem
15. Ibid., p. 105f.
16. Time, April 18, 1969, p.96.
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girl, he sees in her the general forms of Moslem feminine conduct rather than the fine shades of character, until too late to withdraw easily.
The Biblical doctrine shows us the wife as the competent manager who is able to take over all business affairs if needed, so that her husband can assume public office as a civil magistrate; in the words of Proverbs 31:23, he can sit "in the gates," that is, preside as a ruler or judge. Let us examine the women of Proverbs 31: 10-31, whose "price is far above rubies." Several things are clearly in evidence:
1. Her husband can trust her moral, commercial, and religious integrity and competence, (vss. 11,12,29-31).
2. She not only manages her household competently, but she can also manage a business with ability (vss.13-19, 24-25). She can buy and sell like a good merchant and manage a vineyard like an experienced farmer.
3. She is good to her family, and good to the poor and the needy (vss. 20-22).
4. Very important, "She openeth her mouth with wisdom: and in her tongue is the law of kindness" (vs. 26). The useless woman of the Age of Reason, and the useless socialite or jet set woman of today who is a show-piece and a luxury, can and does speak lightly, and as a trifler, because she is a trifle. The godly woman, however, has "in her tongue the law of kindness." People, men and women, who are not triflers avoid trifling and cheap, malicious talk. Loose talk is the luxury of irresponsibility.
5. She does not eat "the bread of idleness" (vs. 27); i.e., the godly woman is not a mere luxury and pretty decoration. She more than earns her keep.
6. "Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her" (vs. 28).
Obviously, such a woman is very different from the pretty doll of the Age of Reason, and the highly competitive masculinized woman of the 20th century who is out to prove that she is as good as any man, if not better.
A Biblical faith will not regard woman as any the less rational or intelligent than man; her reason is normally more practically and personally oriented in terms of her calling as a woman, but she is not less intelligent for that.
Another note is added by King Lemuel in his description of the virtuous woman:
7. "Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who reveres the LORD will be praised" (vs. 30, Berkeley Version).
Nothing derogatory towards physical beauty is here intended, and,
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elsewhere in Scripture, especially in the Song of Solomon, it is highly appreciated. The point here is that, in relation to the basic qualities of a true and capable help-meet, beauty is a transient virtue, and clever, charming ways are deceitful and have no value in the working relationships of marriage.
Important thus as the role of a woman is as mother, Scripture presents her essentially as a wife, i.e., a help-meet. The reference is therefore not primarily to children but to the Kingdom of God and man’s calling therein. Man and wife together are in the covenant called to subdue the earth and to exercise dominion over it.
There are those who hold that procreation is the central purpose of marriage. Certainly the command to "increase and multiply" is very important, but a marriage does not cease to exist if it be childless. St. Augustine wrongly held that I Timothy 5:14 required procreation and defined children as the basic purpose of marriage, and many hold to this opimon.1’ But St. Paul actually said that he was requiring that the younger women, or widows, specifically marry and have children rather than seeking a religious vocation (I Tim. 5:11-15); this is very different from a definition of marriage as procreation. Luther for some time held to the belief that marriage served to provide for procreation and to relieve concupiscence. (Augustine had limited sexual relations to "the necessities of production.")18 Edith Simon calls attention to the change in Luther’s thinking on the subject:
Before Luther had himself cast off celibacy, he had condemned it merely as a source of continual temptation and distraction to those who were not equal to perpetual chastity -- in other words, his attitude then was still basically orthodox, accounting chastity as the higher state. Upon his own experience of marriage, however, that attitude was changed dramatically to one more positive. Perpetual chastity was bad. Only in marriage were human beings able to acquire the spiritual health which they had used to seek in the cloister. So the strange thing was that before he had ever experienced sexual release himself, Luther saw marriage as a primarily physical affair, and afterwards saw its benefits as primarily spiritual -- evidently not for want of physical communion.19
God Himself defined Eve’s basic function as a help-meet; important as motherhood is, it cannot take priority over God’s own declaration.
17. See Jean-Marie Vaissiere, Tile Family, Part I, translated and adapted by Canon Scantlebury (no publisher or date), pp.73-101.
18. ibid., p. 135n.
19. Edith Simon, Luther Alive, p. 337. Simon obviously means "celibacy" where she speaks of "chastity."