In his essay,
“Family, Marriage, and Celibacy in the New Testament” Lincoln H. Blumell, ed. New Testament History, Culture, and Society:
A Background to the Texts of the New Testament (Provo/Salt Lake City: BYU
Religious Studies Center/Deseret Book, 2019), 532-54, Mark D. Ellison (an
associate professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at BYU) did an
excellent job at addressing these topics. The following are some of my
favourite passages:
Jesus’ teachings on Celibacy
In Matthew these teachings on marriage and
divorce are immediately followed by an exchange that affirms a single life as a
worthy spiritual vocation for some individuals. When the disciples remark that
if divorce is so serious, “it is better not to marry,” Jesus states: “Not
everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For
there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have
been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves
eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can”
(Matthew 19:10-12 NRSV). The reference to those “who have made themselves
eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” is best understood not as a
literal reference to emasculation, but as a figurative reference to voluntary
celibacy that uses the same kind of hyperbole Jesus employed in such sayings as
“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out” and “If your right hand
causes you to sin, cut it off” (Matthew 5:29-30 NRSV). Since the saying is
followed by references to Peter and the other disciples having left everything
(including family, if only temporarily) in order to follow Jesus, it may
figuratively describe the disciples during the time they traveled with Jesus.
(p. 541)
In a
footnote for the above, we read:
Bruce R. McConkie proposed that the eunuchs
Jesus mentioned were apparently “men who in false pagan worship had
deliberately mutilated themselves in the apostate notion that such would
further their salvation.” Doctrinal New
Testament Commentary (1965-1973), 1:548. Jesus, however, referred not to
pagan practices but to those whose celibacy was “for the kingdom of heaven’s
sake”; he never used the phrase “the kingdom of heaven” with references to
pagan nations of afterlife. Regarding Jesus’s use of figurative language, the
Gospels take a dim view of Jesus’s hearers who understand his words too literally
and fail to grasp their higher, symbolic import (see, e.g., Mark 8:14-21; John
3:1-12; 4:5-14; 6:22-66). (p. 551 n. 47)
Early Christian Belief in “Eternal Marriage”
Intriguingly, literary and archaeological
evidence show that early Christians anticipated that spouses would reunite
after death. Tertullian (third century AD) wrote that believing spouses would
continue to be “bound” to each other in the Resurrection (58). An inscription
on the tomb of a twenty-two-year-old woman named Bassa (fourth century AD)
speaks comfort to her bereaved husband Gaudentius with assurance of their
affectionate reunion in heaven: “Sweet husband, most closely bound to me
forever, drive off your tears, the noble court of heaven is pleasant . . . You will
be saved, I confess, and will come to the kisses of Bassa” (59) The sarcophagus
of a couple named Catervius and Severina (fourth century AD) portrays the pair
receiving a crown of glory from the hand of God (1 Peter 5:4; 2 Timothy 4:8)
directly beneath an inscription blessing them to “rise together among the
blessed with the help of Christ” (60). John Chrysostom (fourth century AD)
assured a young widow whose husband had died after just five years of marriage,
“You shall depart one day to join the same company with him, not to dwell with
him for five years as you did here, nor for 20, or 100, nor for a thousand or
twice that number but for infinite and endless ages” (61). Early Christians do
not seem to have understood these reunions as “eternal marriage” or “eternal
family” in the same sense that modern Latter-day Saints do (in the Roman world,
the concepts of “marriage” and “family” were tied to many concerns of this
world such as the production of legitimate heirs who would inherit
possessions). However, the hopes early Christians expressed for heavenly
reunions and living together eternally show that they did not believe Jesus’s
answer to the Sadducees implied a dissolution of living marital and familial
bonds after death. (pp. 543-44)
Footnotes for the Above:
(58) Tertullian, Monogamy 10.
(59) ICUR 5.14076: “Dul[c]is in aeternum
mihimet iun[tissi]me coniux, / Ex[c]ute iam lacrimas, placuit bona [r]egia
caeli . . . Sospes eris fateor v[ . . .o]scula Bassae”; final line as
reconstructed by Antonio Ferrua: “Sospes eris fateor u[enies et ad o]scula
Bassae”; trans. Dennis Trout, “Borrowed Verse and Broken Narrative: Agency,
Identity, and the (Bethesda) Sacrophagus of Bassa,” in Life, Death, and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sacrophagi,
ed. Jás Elsner and Janet Huskinson (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2010< 341-43; and
Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, Giuseppe Bovini, and Hugo Brandenburg, Reportoriun der christlich-an-tiken
Sarkophage, bd 1 Rom und Ostia (Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner, 1967),
229-30, Taf. 85, no. 556.
(60) CIL IX 5566 = ILS 1289 = CLE 1560a =
ILCV 98b = ICI X 22b, “surgatis parter cristo praestante beati”; Jutta
Dresken-Weiland, Repertorium der
christlich-antiken Sarkophage, zweiter Band: Italien mit einem Nachtrag Rom und
Ostia, Dalmatien, Museen der Welt (Mainz am Rhein, Germany: Verlag Philipp
von Zabern, 1998), 52-53, no. 148; and Aldo Nestori, Il Mausoleo e il Sarcofago di Vlavivs Ivlivs Catervivs a Tolentino (Citta
del Vaticano: ontificio Instituto di Archeoogia Cristiana, 1996).
(61) John Chrysostom, To a Young Widow 3.188-201; Nicene
and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), trans.
W.R.W. Stephens, 9:123. Additional examples in early Christian literature and
archaeology discussed in Mark D. Ellison, “Visualizing Christian Marriage in
the Roman World” (PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 2017), 193-224.
Was Jesus Married?
Examples of Latter-day Saint arguments that
Jesus was married include the following: (a) Orson Hyde, who speculated that
Jesus was married on the evidence of the wedding of Cana (John 2:1-11) and the
reference in Isaiah 53:10 to the Servant’s “seed” (in Journal of Discourses, 2:82). However, Jesus attended the wedding
as a guest, not a groom (John 2:2), and the Book of Mormon interprets Christ’s “seed”
as prophets who have taught of Christ and those who have believed in them
(Mosiah 15:11-15). See fairmormon.org/answers/Jesus_Christ/Was_Jesus_married.
(b) The claim that since Judaism held marriage and childbearing in high regard
and rabbis were usually married, it would have been scandalous for Jesus not to
have been married. For an example of this argument, see D. Kelly Ogden and Andrew
C. Skinner, Verse by Verse: The Four
Gospels (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2006), 109-9. This argument, however,
oversimplifies the Judaism of the first century, which included groups of
people who practiced sexual renunciation in pursuit of a holy way of life . .
.John the Baptist may have been unmarried. (c) The claim that since Doctrine
and Covenants 131:1-4 teaches that marriage is required for the highest degree
of heavenly reward. Christ must have been married; see a variation of this in
Ogden and Skinner, Verse by Verse,
108-9. Though theoretically possible, this reasoning fails to consider the
utterly unique character of Christ’s mortal mission and the possibility that it
might have required a single-minded devotion including a celibate life (see
Matthew 19:12; Luke 12:50). Examples of Church spokespersons who have clarified
that it is not a Church doctrine that
Jesus was married include Charles W. Penrose, “Peculiar Questions Briefly
Answered,” Improvement Era, September
1912, 1042, “We do not know anything about Jesus Christ being married. The
Church has no authoritative declaration on the subject”; Dales Bills, quoted in
“LDS do not endorse claims in ‘Da Vinci,’” Deseret
News, May 17, 2006, “The belief that Christ was married has never been official
church doctrine. It is neither sanctioned nor taught by the church. While it is
true that a few church leaders in the mid-1800s expressed their opinions on the
matter, it was not then, and is not now, church doctrine.” (p. 552 n. 51)
Paul’s Teachings on Marriage and Celibacy
Family, Marriage, and Celibacy in the
Undisputed Letters of Paul
Paul’s writings also display a complex
attitude toward family and marriage. In some passages Paul sought to reinforce
the stability of marriage among church members. First Thessalonians—likely the earliest-written
book of the New Testament—includes Paul’s instruction to know how “to control
your own body” (KJV: “possess his vessel”) in holiness and honor,” which might alternatively
be understood as to take unto himself a wife in holiness and honor. In this
context Paul teaches against fornication (Greek porneia, sexual sin) and uncontrolled passion (1 Thessalonians
4:3-5 NRSV; compare 1 Corinthians 6:15-20; 9:25). Yet Paul’s teaching of
self-control was balanced by a resistance of ascetic extremism. Responding to
church members at Corinth who thought it was “well for a man not to touch a
woman,” Paul discouraged sexual abstinence within marriage except perhaps for
temporary, mutually agreed-on periods of prayer; otherwise husband and wife
were to show each other consideration and deference in matters of sexual
intimacy (1 Corinthians 7:1-5). Paul also reiterated Jesus’s teaching against
divorce and encouraged believers not to divorce an unbelieving spouse so long
as each consented to remain married, promising that believers would have a
sanctifying, saving influence on their unbelieving spouse and children
(7:10-16). Nevertheless, when people had a choice to marry, Paul’s counsel was
to marry “in the Lord”—to wed a fellow Christians (7:39).
On the other hand, Paul expressed the wish
that the Corinthians would be as he was, unmarried and sexually continent (1
Corinthians 7:8-9). Clarifying that he was giving his personal opinion, Paul
taught that it would be preferable for the unwed not to marry (unless their
passions were strong) and pointed to the free, unencumbered devotion to God
possible in the unmarried state (7:6-40). Paul stated that his reason for this
counsel was because “the appointed time has grown short” and “the present form
of his world is passing away” (7:29, 31 NRSV). The plain sense of his rationale,
as written, is that he was anticipating an imminent return of Christ and the apocalyptic
and of the current age of the world, with all its attendant tribulations. Given
this “impending crisis,” he wanted the saints at Corinth “to be free from anxieties,”
able to give undivided attention to “the affairs of the Lord” and pleasing the
Lord rather than being anxious about pleasing a spouse (1 Corinthians 7:26,
32-35 NRSV). Underlying Paul’s thought may have been Jesus’ teachings about the
tribulations to come and how those days would be particularly difficult for any
who were with child or caring for an infant (Matthew 24:19).
Historian David G. Hunter comments: “It is
fair to say that in 1 Corinthians 7 Paul failed to provide a truly positive
rationale for Christian marriage. Ultimately he presented marriage as merely a
defense against illicit desire. ‘By this essentially negative, even alarmist
strategy,’ Peter Brown has observed, ‘Pal left a fatal legacy to future ages’”
(David G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and
Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy [New York:
Oxford University Press, 2007], 87; citing Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early
Christianity [New York: Columbia University Press, 1988], 55). Part of that
legacy was the development of a tradition that virginity was of greater
religious merit and would earn a greater eternal reward than a life that
included marriage and childbearing (compare 1 Corinthians 7:38).
One means by which Latter-day Saints have
avoided this legacy is the Joseph Smith Translation of 1 Corinthians 7:29,
which alters the meaning of the passage by narrowing its audience, “But I speak unto you who are called unto the
ministry,” and redefining the shortness of time as that remaining until
those addressed, “shall be sent forth unto
the ministry.” Thus, the unwed state was preferable for those embarking on
full-time missionary journeys but not necessarily for everyone. It is not clear
from the JST whether this represents a restoration of original intent (if not
original text) or an inspired, prophetic reframing of the ancient text that
harmonizes it with Restoration scripture and makes it applicable to the
latter-day Church. In any case, there is no insurmountable theological problem
with the plain reading of the received text of 1 Corinthians 7, including Paul’s
expectation of an imminent return of Christ. Latter-day Saints believe that
apostles may hold personal opinions and that “not every statement made by a Church
leader, past or present, necessarily constitutes doctrine.”
Often quoted in Latter-day Saint discussions
of marriage, 1 Corinthians 11:11 does not deal primarily with marriage in its
original context within the epistle. Rather, the statement “neither is the man
without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord” occurs in
the course of a larger passage (1 Corinthians 11:2-16), notoriously difficult
and much debated, regarding women in worship settings. Paul affirms that women
pray and prophesy in Christian worship (1 Corinthians 11:5) yet is concerned
that they wear proper hair coverings. The discussion is marked by tension
between hierarchical and egalitarian views of gender. On one hand, the sequence
of creation in Genesis (Genesis 2:7, 21-22) leads Paul to say, “The husband is
the head of his wife” (1 Corinthians 11:3 NRSV). On the other hand, Paul turns
around and challenges this notion as he states that man also comes through
woman (is born of woman) and neither is without the other in the Lord” (1
Corinthians 11:11-12). Though Paul’s overriding intention appears to have been
to encourage unity in the church (1 Corinthians 11:18), his statement about the
mutual interdependence and reciprocity of woman and man “in the Lord” certainly
has application in marriage. Both in marriage and in the Church family are “intended
to learn from, strengthen, bless, and complete each other” (pp. 543-44)
