Francis J. Moloney on 1 Corinthians 7:32-35

I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord, so that they may be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to put any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and unhindered devotion to the Lord. (1 Cor 7:32-35 NRSV)

Commenting on this passage and how it should not be absolutised, as some critics of LDS theology of marriage do, Francis Moloney (himself a Roman Catholic priest) wrote:

In this passage Paul gives his reasons why he believes that people must drop all attention to ordinary affairs:

in view of the present distress
the appointed time has grown very short
the form of this world is passing away.

What does Paul mean by these expressions? It is clear that the early Paul was convinced and urged on in his preaching because he believed that the final end time, the return of the Lord, was only just around the corner. It is evident from his very first letters, the letters to the Thessalonians (written in the late 40s), that he had preached this message of the imminent return of the Lord with such conviction that the Christians had decided that all they had to do was sit and wait. There was no longer any need to apply themselves to their day-to-day tasks, if the Day of the Lord was about to arrive (see 1 Thess. 4:13-5:11 and the whole of 2 Thessalonians). The first letter to the Corinthians was probably written shortly after, in A.D. 54. Paul is still finding the urgency of his message in the conviction that all is about to end very shortly. It is because of this conviction that he can so strongly advocate that his Corinthian community devote all their time and attention, not to wives, husbands, mourning, rejoicing, buying, selling and dealing with the world (see 1 Cor. 7:29-31) but so that they might secure their undivided attention and devotion to the Lord who was about to come (see 7:35).

But he did not come—and he still has not come. If Paul’s teaching on celibacy is so intimately linked to his presupposition that the end is at hand, does this teaching not become somewhat relative when the end time does not come? In fact, Paul’s own understanding of the end time develops. He was able to see, as the years passed by, that the Church was going to face a long history and thus several of the positions he takes in later letters vary from those found in the Thessalonian correspondence and 1 Corinthians. If the end time is near at hand, there is no need for a theology of marriage, but if the Church is going to work its way through history, then such a theology is urgently needed—and it was the Pauline point of view in Eph. 5:21-3, that was used in Gaudium et Spes 48.

Having said all this, however, a word of warning must be issued. We must not rule out the central point of Paul’s teaching. Notice that he states his purpose in 1 Cor. 7:32—‘I want you to be free from anxieties.’ Anything which stands between the Christian and his total adhesion to the Lord must be regarded as secondary. One of these things can be the problems which arise from the case and love of a spouse. Paul is not primarily concerned about celibacy or marriage; he is concerned that his Christians be one in joy, love and hope, freed from any anxieties which may destroy such central factors in the ‘life in Christ’. The only thing that matters for Paul is that his Christians are consumed by an ‘undivided devotion to the Lord’. (Francis J. Moloney, Free to Love: Poverty Chastity Obedience [London: Harton, Longman and Todd, 1981], 46-47)