No one ever asked Jesus to define marriage. At least, we have no specific scriptural reference. One man united with one woman for life in mutual support and cooperating in the procreation and rearing of children was essentially normative even in pagan circles throughout the Jewish diaspora of Christ’s time. We do, however, have a response from Jesus to a very direct question about compromising one of these essential norms: what is one to do who for any reason no longer can (or wants to) live with a spouse? Moses, the lawgiver, had made accommodation for divorce, which Jesus rejects outright, calling any attempted remarriage adultery.
Like each essential element, indissolubility has its foundation in the image of God stamped on natural marriage itself. Of course, it also requires human cooperation: the freely willed and actual union of the male and female partners. Jesus cites Genesis to illustrate both the divine and human components of the foundation of marriage: “So God created mankind in his own image; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). Creation reveals the dynamic, interpersonal nature of God, its creator. A trinitarian image is stamped into conjugal love, mirroring God as a community of different yet co-equal persons, a mutual love so strong that it generates another person.
By contrast, today’s foundational standard for marriage – the ethic of our currently prevailing culture – is consensual sex, little more. Within certain limits, which continue to erode, it is perceived to be a matter of fairness and equality that any two consenting adults should be free not only to co-habit but to also have that union legalized under the rubric of “marriage.” In a growing number of countries and states, the sex or gender of the parties is no longer regarded as relevant, nor whether they could or ever intend to have children by or through one another. Virtually all such government-sanctioned relationships can be dissolved by agreement or the fiat of some government official.
Although the campaign to legitimize same-sex unions as marriage occupies the media’s almost undivided attention, the real root of the contemporary excursion from the traditional model is the tendency to reduce it to no more than a consensual physical relationship between two people with no essential purpose beyond the parties pleasing each other. Permanence, sexual complimentarity, the expectation of children are now, even if they remain desirable, optional “add-ons.”
State-defined marriage today contains little beyond what two contracting parties want. All that is left is a promised union between any two adult (so far) persons. The couple form, more or less, a symbiotically closed circuit rather than a society welcoming new lives through procreative cooperation. Sexual and emotional intimacy – just for a couple’s satisfaction – are about all that remains.
Those caught up in less broadly defined relationships – married or not – are still called to greater generosity. The God of all love opens up the door to what human love is truly capable of, enabling it to reach its higher potential in a sacrament of trinitarian love. Jesus does not condemn those who struggle to reach this level or, for different reasons, may not choose (or be able to choose) marriage at all. Yet He clearly neither lowers the standard nor changes what constitutes it.
The testimony of God-centered married couples who open themselves generously and sacrificially to remain faithful for life and the raising of their families has never been more crucial. Without such witness, all attempts to model love in the divine image – is there any other pattern for human love? – are left with much less to enrich and inspire them.