1 Corinthians 7 is one of those passages from Paul’s writings that is frequently misquoted and taken out of context to support things which its author never intended. People have referred to this passage and to others to declare Paul a misogynist. The truth however is that misogyny was the farthest thing from his mind. In Paul’s mind, there was neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, not even male or female, but all the baptized were one thing in Christ Jesus.
The context here is Christian practice and devotion, and Paul answering questions the Corinthian Christians had about what was the best devotion to Christ in terms of marriage or celibacy. In the first seven verses, Paul is essentially laying down the rule of a religious community for those members who choose to marry. The overarching rule is Jesus' "love one another as I have loved you." Thus, marriage becomes a practice of religious devotion to Christ as each party in the marriage practices loving the other person as Christ loved them, surrendering themselves to them, sacrificing themselves for them, and putting the other person's needs above their own. The focus is still Jesus Christ as the only exception Paul gives to this is "leisure time in prayer" before returning to the same practice. Notice also that this is not given as a command but as an allowance, that is, a special dispensation from what Paul considers should be the normal mode of operation which is in Paul's mind (as Paul began this paragraph, "it is beautiful [lit. the best good] for a human being to not be grasped [lit. fastened to, grasped, touched, affected] by a woman") total chastity, as he will later explain, in order to focus specifically on Christ and what God wants. This falls in line with the rest of Paul's teaching on Christian religious practice in that every action, word, and thought are to be in submission to Christ with whom we have been joined through baptism into His death, burial, and resurrection. Paul believed that marriage could be a distraction from this, and so the guidelines he laid down were to bring the marriage practice into line as a devotion to Christ and with Christ as the focus rather than anything else.
In order to understand what Paul's talking about in verses 8 through 16, you have to take the entire context of what he is saying into account here. As I have previously written, the preferred norm for Christian practice, as Paul understood it, was unmarried chastity in order to focus on submission to Christ with whom we have been joined just as He submitted to the Father. Paul saw marriage as a distraction to this, but recognized that not everyone had the internal control for total celibacy. As a result, he laid down some guidelines in the previous verses for married couples in order to transform their marital relationship into a devotion to Christ by focusing on each partner loving the other person and surrendering all authority over their own bodies to the other person as Christ taught. The best way to think of these instructions is as guidelines for a religious community specifically. Think along the lines of the religious rule of the Jesuits, Franciscans, Benedictines, etc. and you'll be on the right track.
In these verses, he is is laying down guidelines with this preferred norm of practice in mind. "Yes, it's better to stay unmarried, but if you don't have the self control, there's no wrong in getting married. I wouldn't recommend it myself, but there's nothing necessarily wrong with it and its better to get married than to burn up inside." And then he turns to address a question which we in this day in age simply don't understand. "Should I leave my husband/wife in order to devote myself to Christ?"
In the writings of the early church, there are accounts of married couples choosing by agreement to remain chaste or celibate in order to devote themselves to Christ. Essentially, the question was whether or not it was okay for a woman to leave her husband to become the equivalent of a nun, or a man his wife to become the equivalent of a monk (these formal designations would not come into play for hundreds of years, but the practice of voluntary religious chastity was firmly in place by the time of Paul).
To this question Paul responded, "No, it's not okay. That's not loving your spouse like Christ loved the Church, or surrendering all authority over your body to them as Christ did to us. If anyone does or has left their spouses to devote themselves to Christ, then they either need to remain celibate (no using it as an excuse to marry someone else), or they need to return to their spouses. It's okay if you have an unbelieving spouse if they want to take off, it's not our place to judge the unbelieving, but it's not okay to leave them. "
I bring this up, because this passage has been grossly misunderstood within the context of our own twisted and distorted "Christian" practice rather than the context of the first century and the churches planted by the man who wrote the letter. Paul was not saying a Christian woman should not escape and seek refuge from an abusive husband. Paul would never have considered the abusive husband a part of the church based on his behavior. Paul was not saying one spouse should trap themselves in a marriage with a raging alcoholic, or someone who would place them in danger. This kind of a person Paul would classify as "the unbelieving" regardless of whether they showed up to church on Sunday because they were clearly under the control of their own malfunctioning neurology and not under the control of Christ. This passage should never be used out of the context in which it was written, and Paul would be horrified to know Christians have historically used his words to keep women subjugated and in dangerous, abusive marriages.
The truth is that none of 1 Corinthians 7 will make a lot of sense in context until you accept that the question being addressed was whether or not it was better to be married or celibate to follow Christ, and whether or not it was better to remain with your spouse or to let them go to remain celibate as a devotion to Christ. This is true also in the last set of verses dealing with whether or not a man who has a contractual betrothal should go ahead with the wedding or keep his fiancee a virgin. Paul’s stance was that if the man thought he was breaking protocol by not marrying her then he wasn’t “sinning” or making a mistake by going ahead with the wedding. But if the man’s conscience was clear and he could restrain himself, then unwedded celibacy, in Paul’s opinion, would be better. Neither was wrong.
The question of celibacy as a devotional practice in the early church is a controversial one among Protestants, and especially Independent or Evangelical Bible Christians because of its continued practice within the Roman Catholic, and to some extant, Eastern Orthodox Churches, with which those aforementioned theologies are still at odds. The idea of celibate nuns and monks is derided and even seen as evil or deviant within some circles, and enforced celibacy is frequently blamed by them as the causes of those cases of pedophilia and sexual abuse which have been uncovered. The fact of the matter is that, in the writings of the early church, celibacy was both common and normal among the baptized. Paul himself was the primary example and obvious champion of the celibate life.
The key to understanding this passage and Paul's understanding of the subject is that it was voluntary at all times. Paul thought it was the best route to go, but understood, like Jesus, that not everyone could handle it. So, his determination was that those who married did well and it wasn't a screw-up, and those that could handle celibacy did even better and it still wasn't a screw-up. The key here was whether or not one or the other would interfere with or distract from the individual's submission to Jesus Christ with whom he or she had been joined. Being married can be a distraction from Jesus Christ as you have to focus on submitting to the other person as much as you have to submit to Christ. On the other hand, not being married might lead, especially for men, to not being able to bring their sex drive under control and thus whoring. So, what Paul was saying was that it depended on the person in question, and what they could and couldn't handle. No oaths, no vows of celibacy, just whether or not you could handle it and then it became between you, God, and the person to whom you were engaged if you had one. Paul gave the instructions about not leaving your wife or husband within this context. Essentially, he said that, if you are already married, don't leave your wife or husband to become celibate, and if you already had, to either remain celibate or return to your lawful spouse.
Because of two thousand years of cultural religious distortion, it is nearly impossible to understand this passage within the frameworks of our current Christian religious traditions. As always in Paul's writings, the foundation to understand this practice is that of letting go of everything which distracts from or impedes the disengagement from our own biologically and environmentally driven psychology and submission to the psychology of Christ with whom the Christian has been joined through baptism into His death, burial, and resurrection. For some, that means marriage, and for others, that means celibacy. Neither is right for everyone, and, as with all other topics concerning devotional practice, Paul recognizes that some things work better for one person than they do for the other. His whole general take on it was, whatever you need to do to cling to Christ and disengage from yourself, do it. Whether it's marriage or celibacy, circumcision or foreskin, celebrating holy days or treating every day alike. None of it actually matters in substance except whether or not it frees you to submit to Jesus Christ further and this is the goal which drove him, drove every Christian in the early church, and which should drive us today.
No comments:
Post a Comment