Husband and Wife for Eternity: The Thought of the Pre-Nicene Fathers

Husband and Wife for Eternity: The Thought of the Pre-Nicene Fathers

by

Rev. David A. Fisher

 
“ On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.  Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. …Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” - John 2:1-2, 11.

 
The first miracle of Jesus according to John’s Gospel took place at a wedding, thereby pointing to the significance of this vocation of love and fidelity to another person, and the establishing of family life.  By the miracle of turning water into choice wine, Jesus also links marriage to his Passion and Cross, underlying the self-emptying and sacrificial nature of love.

A number of the Fathers of the Church who flourished before the Council of Nicaea taught or at the very least make illusion to the notion, that the marriage bond exists beyond death and into eternity.1  To understand their position we must take into consideration the world in which they lived, worked, and ministered.  

The early Fathers of the Church lived during the height of Roman power.  Rome understood itself to be the Great Ecumenical Empire, comprising many cultures, races, and religions from Hadrian’s Wall in Northern England to the banks of the Jordan River.  Roman roads allowed peoples from even beyond Roman rule to travel in safety, selling their goods and spreading their beliefs.  The glue that held this vast empire together was Roman Law, a bureaucracy that was unswayed by the power plays of the ruling families, and the Roman legions.  On the other hand the Roman world into which Christianity began and in which the early Fathers of the Church proclaimed the Gospel was one of moral licentiousness.  This is the Rome of “pane et circensis” (bread and circuses), where the huge populations of the poor in Roman cities were pacified by “vacations” of free bread and bloodthirsty games of gladiatorial duals and animals attacking innocent humans.  This is the Rome of rampant prostitution and pornography.  Slaves outnumbered citizens, the urban poor lived in small, dirty and often dangerous dwellings, and all were weighed down by heavy Roman taxes.  

It is not surprising given this picture of Roman life, that Christianity won over the hearts and minds of the city dwellers faster than the “paganus”, the rural population.  Christianity brought a message of hope, human dignity, and a moral/ethical way of life that resonated in the lives of those searching for a meaning to existence beyond civil law or fleeting pleasures.  It was in the cities that one experienced most dramatically the grandeur and the failure of Imperial Rome.  The Fathers of the Church confronted with questions about marriage, divorce and remarriage, offered a different approach than the civil law of the time.  Under Roman Law marriage was a private legal matter, which favored males, and in which divorce was easy to obtain.  Also, due to the fact that the single were taxed higher than those who were married, those who were divorced were usually remarried in a short period of time.  The Church’s concern was instructing the faithful in how to live a Christian life in such an anti-Christian environment.  In contrast to a legal view of marriage, the Fathers offered a spiritual view of marriage that emphasized the Christian proclamation that in marriage the two become one and for some of the Fathers this oneness is an eternal bond.  

Hermas: 2 In the fourth chapter of his writings called the Commands, Hermas shows his belief in the eternity of marriage by his command that those who divorce should never remarry, unless it is with the repentant spouse whom they divorced.  He writes, “3 For to the servants of God there is but one repentance. And for this cause a man that putteth away his wife ought not to take another, because she may repent.  This act is alike both in the man and in the woman… But it is therefore commanded that both the man and the woman should remain unmarried because such persons may repent.”

Justin Martyr: 4 Justin having been a Stoic, Peripatetic, Pythagorean and Platonist, expresses the rigorous view towards moral/ethical issues that the Greco-Roman philosophers tried to challenge the morally suspect pagan world with.  In becoming a Christian he applies this rigor to Christian practices and beliefs to further challenge the moral laxity of the pagan world he has now converted from.  The Council of Nicaea would eventually moderate the views of many Pre-Nicene Fathers.  He writes, “So that all who, by human law, are twice married, are in the eye of our Master sinners, and those who look upon a woman to lust after her.” 5  

Athenagoras: 6 Unlike Justin Martyr and his pupil Tatian who are more polemical in their confrontation with pagan thought, Athenagoras takes more of an apologetic approach in his writings, choosing to explain and defend Christian faith.  However, in his A Plea for the Christians he reflects the same teaching as Justin as concerns the eternity of marriage. He writes, “Second marriage is only a specious adultery," he declared. "'For whosoever puts away his wife,' says He [meaning Jesus], 'and marries another, commits adultery.”7

Evaluation: How are we living almost two millennia from the Early Fathers to evaluate their teaching for Christianity today?  First, we should revere the Fathers for their ability to express the Christian Gospel with clarity for the people of their day.  They tackled the major philosophical, theological, ethical and social questions presented to them by pagan culture (for the Early Fathers) and heretical teachings (for the post-Nicene Fathers).  

Second, the world of the Fathers was not so different from our own; although the Medieval world may be closer to ours in time, the world in which the Fathers lived was a secular ocean in which swam many competing philosophies, religions, ethical views, and political factions, in an urban rather than rural (like the Middle Ages) world. They are greatly responsible for the conversion of the Roman world to Christianity and the maintaining of Trinitarian faith against the assaults of Arianism and other heretical movements of their times.  

Third, the views of the Early Fathers that we examined does not represent the total corpus of work of  the Fathers on marriage and neither do they reflect necessarily the majority view.  Again, we should keep in mind that the Council of Nicaea did not adopt their views in its official teachings on marriage.  However, what they offer to us is a reminder of the sanctity and fidelity of marriage.  They remind us that Jesus elevated the bond of marriage beyond the directives of Roman Law and even beyond the Mosaic Law, to be a living symbol of God’s love for his Church.          

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Notes:

 1 “Two votes at the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) underscored the Church Fathers’ devotion to marriage.  The first vote maintained clerical marriage relationships, (1) the second defended surviving spouses’ remarriage.  The the latter was a clear indication of their esteem of the institution, in that they provided for widows and widowers who yearned for a new mate, it was actually a moderating voice.  So high was the Church’s regard for a couple’s original vows that such prominent figures as Hermas, Justin Martyr, and Athenagoras argued that the bond outlasted death itself. (2) In the end their stricture was not adopted, (3) but the very fact of its consideration showed the group was quite serious about marital laws.  As one patristic scholar, Willy Rordorf, put it, “Concerning the conception of marriage as a total union of the couple implying a fidelity without reserve, there is a unanimous agreement between the New Testament and the Early Church.” - John Sanidiopoulos, “The Church Fathers’ High View of Marriage”, in Mystagogy, 2012.

 
2  “The Muratorium Fragment is responsible for the information that Hermas, author of The Shepherd was the brother of Pope St. Pius I (around 140-155 A.D.)…he was a slave and afterwards a freedman;…” - William A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. I, p. 30, 1970.

 
3 Hermas, Commands, translated in www.sacred-texts.com/bib/lbob/lbob27.htm

 
4  St. Justin Martyr was born into paganism…As a Christian philosopher he became an itinerant, eventually arriving in Rome, where he founded a school in which he had Tatian the Syrian as a pupil.  …along with six companions he was beheaded…in 165 A.D., Jurgens, vol. I, p.50.

5  Justin Martyr, from the Ante-Nicene Fathers, translated in www.sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/001/0010388.htm

 
6  Athenagoras was a Christian philosopher in Athens. …a contemporary of Justin and Tatian…(his death) took place soon after 180 A.D., Jurgens, vol. I, p.69.

 
7  Athenagoras of Athens, A Plea for the Christians, as found in “Divorce and Remarriage from the Early Church to John Wesley”, Trinity Journal, p. 131, 1990.