Unit II: Christian Perspectives of Marriage

* Lesson A: Marriage in the Scriptures

Marriage

It is a covenant

Vocation to Marriage

It is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator.

Marriage

It  not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes.

Old Testament

Uses the image of marital love to reveal the relationship binding God and his people.

Marriage

It is rooted in creation

In the Original Plan of God

The intimate community of life and love which consti­tutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws

God Himself is the Author of Marriage

Since God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man. And this love which God blesses is intended to be fruitful and to be realized in the common work of watching over creation.

Holy Scripture

It affirms that man and woman were created for one another

Woman

The ? , "flesh of his flesh," his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by God as a "helpmate"; she thus represents God from whom comes our help.” Cf. Gen 2:18-25.

Man

A ? leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.” Gen 2:24.

The Consequence of Sin

Every man experience evil around him and within him­self. This experience makes itself felt in the relationships between man and woman.

Sin

According to faith, the disorder we notice so painfully does not stem from the nature of man and woman, nor from the nature of their relations.

Rupture of Original Communion

It is the first consequence (from first sin), between man and woman

Mutual Recriminations

Man and woman relations were distorted by ?

Mutual Attraction

The Creator's own gift, changed into a relationship of domination and lust

Fruitful

The beautiful vocation of man and woman

self-absorption, egoism, pursuit of one's own pleasure, and to open oneself to the other

Under God’s mercy, after the fall, marriage helps to overcome ?, to mutual aid and to self-giving

Moral Conscience

Concerning the unity and indissolubility of marriage developed under the pedagogy of the old law.

Old Testament

 Polygamy of patriarchs and kings is not yet explicitly rejected.

Books of Ruth and Tobit

Bear moving witness to an elevated sense of marriage and to the fidelity and tenderness of spouses.

• The elevation of the spiritual life 

• The placement of nobility above lust 

• The recollection of tradition 

• The role of the family

The Excellence of Marriage, Tobit

New Testament

The sacramental marriage of Christians signifies the love uniting Christ and his Church.

Nuptial Covenant

It is between God and his people Israel had prepared the way for the new and everlasting covenant in which the Son of God, by becoming incarnate and giving his life, has united to himself in a certain way all mankind saved by him, thus preparing for "the wedding-feast of the Lamb.

Indissoluble

matrimonial union of man and woman

The beginning

Jesus unequivocally taught the original meaning of the union of man and woman as the Creator willed it from

Unity

For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church.

Indissolubility

Exclusive and Permanent

Authentic Love

 Self-Sacrifice and Commitment

Indissolubility

• 1 Cor 7:10-11. “To the married I give charge, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not separate from her husband, but if she does, let her remain single or else be reconciled to her husband – and that the husband should not divorce his wife”. 

• Rom 7:2-3. “Thus, a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies, she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she remarries another, she is not an adulteress”.

Authentic Love

• Eph. 5:25-27 "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her," 

• Eph 5:22-24. “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.”

Christian Marriage

Is an efficacious sign, the sacrament of the covenant of Christ and the Church.

berith

Describes a compact made by passing between pieces of flesh.

diatheke

Used in the Greco-Roman law to describe the settlement of an inheritance and used in the NT to describe the self-commitment, promises, and conditions by which God entered into relationship with man.

Convenire and Testamentum

means to "come together, unite; be suitable, agree. To witness or testify

Covenant

Motivated by sacrifice and love (I am yours and you are mine). There is exchange of persons in communion. In marital covenant, one sacrifices his/her rights and assumes responsibility. In the marital covenant, both are asked to sacrificially love one another till the day they die.

Contract

Motivated by self-interest (This is yours and this is mine). There is the exchange of goods and services. In a marital contract, one’s rights are protected and limits responsibilities.

Matrimonial Covenant

By which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring

Dignity of a Sacrament

this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the ?

Primordial Model of the Family

To be sought in God Himself, in the Trinitarian mystery of His life. . . The divine We is the eternal pattern of the human WE.