There is a growing tendency nowadays to deem it fair to consider all domestic arrangements as being ‘families’, and consequently to define ‘marriage’ in a wider sense than merely that between a man and a woman. Do the Christian Scriptures have any light to throw on the matter?
To call marriage a contract is extremely reductive. It is much more- Fr Robert Soler
The first two chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, affirm that God created the universe. Human beings were made “in the image of God”, “male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:27).
In the earthly paradise, man related to the transcendent God and to the animal world, but still felt incomplete (Gen. 2:20). God decided to give him a ‘helper’ (Gen. 2:18); the original Hebrew word here is more precisely translated as an ‘ally’ – an ally who closely resembles the other human being and will bring him out of that solitude which can blunt a person’s vital energy.
Upon seeing Eve, Adam significantly exclaims that she is “at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh… thus… a man leaves his father and mother and becomes attached to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen. 2:23-24).
The narratives in Genesis 1 and 2 affirm at least four things about the family:
Firstly, the family is built on the personal alliance of love between a man and a woman. To call marriage a contract, as Maltese law still does, is extremely reductive. It is much more.
Marriage is a life-long personal covenant between a man and a woman. In this conjugal alliance, there is total gift of self and love that tends towards permanence.
Secondly, God acted so that the human being would have a ‘suitable’ ally. ‘Suitable’ here means something like ‘face-to-face’. It implies equality and reciprocity.
The graphical creation of Eve from Adam’s rib (Gen. 2:21) does not subordinate woman to man, it simply stresses their sharing the same nature. Man and woman will be for each other, an ‘I’ and a ‘You’, to support, encourage, complete and comfort one another, bringing out the best in each other.
Thirdly, when the text says that the man and woman shall “become one flesh”, it is clearly affirming the beauty of the body and of loving sexual union in marriage.
The ‘flesh’ and ‘bones’ referred to in Genesis 2:23 express the biblical perspective of human beings, with their capacity to communicate even their deepest spiritual selves in a bodily manner – for we ‘are bodily’, we do not just ‘have a body’.
Fourthly, God tells the man and woman to ‘be fruitful, multiply’ (Gen. 1:28), namely to ensure that their bodily love is open to that new life which they are together biologically equipped to pass on.
In line with this, German scholar Gerhard von Rad sees a second and important meaning of the expression “they become one flesh he argues that this not only refers to the couple’s mutual love. It also refers, he says, to the child that will be born through the intimate coming together of man and woman.
The child will obviously bear and unite in him or herself the genetic elements received from both parents. But, beyond that, he or she will in some way embody the two spiritual realities of the parents. He or she will be their one flesh.
Noted anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss famously wrote: “The family, as the more or less permanent union approved by society, of a man, a woman and children… is a universal phenomenon, to be found in all and every type of society”. This is of the essence of ‘family’ and alone deserves to be considered a ‘marriage’.
Christian resistance to the alteration of the concepts of ‘marriage’ and ‘family’ is not at all capricious. Genesis 1 and 2 reveal the divine design for the typical family unit. Recognition of other domestic arrangements may be fair, but their being placed on a par with the marriage of a man and a woman, with their children, is quite another matter.
Fr Soler is a member of the Society of Jesus.