What is Marriage?

Another assignment from Marriage and Family.  Professor Sells wrote, "Writing as a scholar, what “Identifies” marriage, and particularly, what identifies Christian Marriage?"

       Material logic shows that to identify anything, we must identify first its membership in a group, and then differentiate from other members of that group (e.g., Simmons, 1961, pp.41-53): a marriage is a relationship; but it differs from other relationships, in that it is an organic bodily union. Just as our organs each have separate functions, yet work together towards one goal (the sustenance of the body), so one male body and one female body are separate yet have one ultimate goal (the engendering and nurture of children)(Girgis, George, and Anderson, 2010, p.245-287).

        There are, of course, a number of objections to this way of looking at marriage. What about polygamy? No marriage is between one man and many women (or vice versa), although one man may have many marriages (Girgis, George, and Anderson, 2010, p.247). What about couples who cannot have children? There are baseball teams who will never win a championship or even a game; nevertheless, they are constituted essentially differently from a team of umpires (Girgis, George, and Anderson, 2010, p.267). What about mutual comfort and encouragement? The love of husband and wife is inherently good, yet it does not define a marriage (although it may characterize many marriages, and it may lead to many marriages).

        Which leads us to the capstone question. What about Christian marriage? Doesn't the traditional conjugal definition limit or trivialize Christian marriage? Shouldn't we be talking about glorifying God instead of trying to bump up numbers by popping out miniature Christians? The objection reveals an artificial distinction between the physical and the spiritual (Feser, 2006, p.19-48). Engendering and nurturing children is profoundly spiritual, and is yet another way of using our bodies to glorify God. There are hardly any spiritual acts (if any) we can do which do not involve our bodies (you use your body for silent prayer, after all). Married people worship God corporately, ideally, by having and nurturing children.

        So it could be subtly confusing to speak of Christian marriage. All married humans are designed for the ideal of marriage, but Christianity makes it clearer and easier to attain. We could also ask, "What is the purpose of the Christian life?" But to be a Christian is to claim that the purpose of life is the same for everyone (McInerney, 1997, p.35-59) and best achieved (or not at all) through Christianity (Kreeft & Tacelli, 1994, p.341-360). If marriage is related to the meaning of life, then it is related to the meaning of life for everyone everywhere. Non-Christians are married for the same reason Christians are; but they do it imperfectly, in the sense that they do not see, yet, the ultimate reason and purpose for their marriage. Again, all people feel that murder is wrong (allowing for differences in definition), but to be a Christian is to say that Christianity teaches us most clearly the ultimate implications of murder. "What is Christian murder?" can be a good question but it would seem to imply that there are also equally valid Buddhist murders and Jain murders.

        And so what? We cannot see clearly what is wrong unless we see clearly what a thing should be, its essence. All efforts to help marriages must be based on an idea of what marriage is. This is also the basis for any coherent ethics, the only way to get a "should" from an "is" (McInerney, 1997, p36-37). There has to be a clear view of the good, because there are a vast multiplicity of ways a thing can be good, but only a limited number of ways it can suffer a deprivation of the good.

References

Girgis, S., George, R. P., & Anderson, R. T. (2010). What is marriage? Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, 34, 245-287.

Kreeft, P. & Tacelli, R. K. (1994). Handbook of Christian apologetics. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

McInerney, R. (1997). Ethica Thomistica, rev. ed. Washington, DC: CUA Press.

Simmons, E. D. (1961). The scientific art of logic: an introduction to the principles of formal and material logic. Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing Co.