I apologize for starting yet one more new thread around the topic of one flesh, however previous threads have taken a verse-by-verse approach and I want to take a more holistic approach this time by looking at all the verses that contain the phrase one flesh at once.
Some of what I'm going to say won't be surprising to some of you and some will. Let's start with the most surprising part, I may be in the throes of an evolution around an aspect of this issue. There's something in 1 Corinthians 6:16 we've all missed and that colors my bumper sticker statement that "sex=marriage." We'll talk about that later. Incidentally, this is not the slam dunk I teased in a different thread. That particular slam dunk will be in this post, but because of the new insights into 1 Corinthians 6:16 may force me to take on a more nuanced position, I can't in good faith currently declare the debate over.
What will not surprise those of you who you have followed this debate is that I still maintain that the phrase "one flesh" is how the Bible describes the relationship we've mislabeled (and then misdefined) as "marriage". By looking at every instance of the use of the phrase "one flesh" in the Bible I believe this claim becomes very difficult for the honest examiner to deny.
An examination of every verse that contains the phrase "one flesh" does not take very long. There are only 6. Here is the comprehensive list: Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:5-6 with two occurrences, Mark 10:8 which has two occurrences in the single verse, the controversial 1 Corinthians 6:16 which is unique in all of scripture in its use of the phrase, and one we've never discussed before, the aforementioned slam dunk, Ephesians 5:31, itself controversial throughout all of Christendom. Let's do a quick overview of all five passages.
Genesis 2:24 - This is where it all begins. God has just brought Eve to Adam for the first time and after relating the details of the meeting the narrator of the story leaves the narrative to give us commentary on the significance of the passage, the first time this happens in scripture as far as I can tell. The verse reads, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." This is the original use of the phrase and the establishment of the relationship between a man and a woman that we've incorrectly labeled "marriage". Every other use of the phrase "one flesh" is a direct quote of this foundational passage, with one possible exception. Almost everything we know about the universal concept of a "marriage" is contained in this verse. Everything else we're given is either a derivative of this verse or a limited subset of it. Fascinatingly this is the only place in the Old Testament that the phrase occurs.
Matthew 19:5-6 - In this passage the Pharisees have attempted to test Jesus by asking Him a difficult passage involving putting away a woman. Jesus prefaces His answer by quoting Genesis 2:24, repeating the last part of the verse, "Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh," reinforcing the importance of that segment of the verse. He then adds a powerful conclusion, "What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder." These two verses make it impossible for me to not recognize the phrase "one flesh" as the name God uses for what we describe as "marriage". We'll go in depth on this momentarily.
Mark 10:8 - In this passage the Pharisees are again testing Jesus around the topic of divorce and again, starting in verse 7, He quotes Genesis 2:24 and again He repeats the final line of the verse for added emphasis; "so they are no more twain, but one flesh." I am unsure if this is the same instance that was relayed to us in Matthew 19:5-6 or a different instance. I've heard it taught both ways. I believe the consensus on this forum is that these are separate events; one dealing with lawful divorce and one dealing with unlawful putting away. But again, I am unclear on that aspect of the two accounts.
1 Corinthians 6:16 - Alright, this is where all of the controversy starts. A brief overview of this verse is very difficult to do. In typical Pauline fashion it's not even clear exactly where the thought starts. It may be in verse 12, verse 13 touches on fornication but by verse 15 Paul has gotten to this point about making the members of Christ the members of a harlot. He further complicates the matter by veering from the template we've seen so far. He does not quote the entirety of Genesis 2:24 but only the phrase, "for two, saith he, shall be one flesh." The phrase is not repeated a second time for emphasis as it was by Christ, also the context of the verse does not make it clear that we are dealing with a man and woman who exist in the state of "marriage," as the previous three passages do. However, the next teaching Paul launches in to after he wraps up this one at the end of the chapter are an important series of teachings on sex inside the relationship we call "marriage." Chapter 7 contains a number of important teachings around sex, marriage and divorce that extend all of the way through to verse 17. The verses in chapter 6 starting somewhere around verse 12 seem to be artificially separated from the verse around "marriage" in chapter 7. That being said, the radically different formulation of 1 Corinthians 6:16 from the other passages quoting Genesis 2:24 requires study and explanation.
Ephesian 5:31 - The aforementioned slam dunk which I still think is quite difficult to disprove. Ephesians 5 is the New Testament passage, and possibly of the whole of scripture, that tells us how followers of Jesus are to conduct their "marriages". This is the famous submission passage where husbands are commanded to love their wives with the love of Christ and wives are commanded to submit to their husbands in all things as the church does to Christ. If you want to start a fight this is the passage to do it with. The "one flesh" quote is contained in verse 31 and here Paul returns to quoting the entirety of Genesis 2:24, although he does not repeat the last sentence for emphasis as Christ does in Matthew and Mark.
What should not be missed however is verse 30 which is repeating themes for 1 Corinthians 6:16 that link the "one flesh" relationship between a man and a woman to the concept of Christians being members of the body of Christ, tying 1 Corinthians 6:16 closer to the concept of "marriage" without negating the need to study more in depth the truncated quote of Genesis 2:24 found therein.
There you have it, all of the instances of the use of the phrase "one flesh" in the Bible. The vast majority of them are found in quotes of Genesis 2:24 or in that verse itself. It's always found in proximity to "marriage" (there is one verse I have left out of this discussion that uses the words "one" and "flesh" sequentially but only to denote the number of fleshes involved in the idea, not as a unique state of two fleshes being one).
So why does any of this mean that we should eschew the word "marriage" for the phrase "one flesh"? It's important at this stage to remind everyone what my thesis is, I am proposing that when we speak about the relationship that exists between a man and woman, that can make them liable to the charger of adultery, that we should refer to that relationship as "one flesh" and not "marriage". In fact, from now on I will only be using the phrase one flesh, and will be deleting the air quotes, when I write about the subject here or when I'm in conversation with those I won't have to make a long winded explanation to.
My reasoning is simple and should be obvious at this point. At the end of Genesis 2:24 the man and woman are described as persisting in a state called one flesh. It says "they shall be one flesh." It is a statement that designates the category of their relationship going forward. They are not "married" or "covenanted," they shall be one flesh. One flesh is what they're going to be.
This is of course undeniably reinforced in Matthew and Mark. When Christ is asked about putting away a woman, He quotes the Genesis verse and expounds on it by repeating and emphasizing that "they are no more twain, but one flesh." The opposite of a man and woman being separate is being one flesh. He goes on immediately to say that "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." God has fused the two into one flesh and man shouldn't separate that. Because they are one flesh and because God Himself is somehow a part of forming that one flesh, divorce should not happen. Again, the one flesh is integral to the teaching on divorce, in fact the divorce is the undoing of one flesh. There is no divorce outside of one flesh.
That brings us to 1 Corinthians 6:16, a contentious verse that I'm going to skip over for now for reasons that I've laid out already. I suspect that the connections between 1 Corinthians 6 and Ephesians 5 vis a vis the body of Christ and the allegory of one flesh are going to take a lot of time and study to unravel. I am not confident that I am capable of accomplishing it. But while there are seemingly important elements left out of the 1 Corinthians 6 one flesh, it is contained within broader and important teachings about how to conduct the one flesh relationship. It is not at all clear that these subtractions change the nature of the one flesh relationship described in 1 Corinthians 6. In fact it could simply be that their absence is why that type of one flesh relationship shouldn't be formed, since it could of necessity lead to adultery through an unlawful putting away.
And if all that wasn't enough, we come to Ephesians 5:31. Here we get the most powerful and encompassing description of the responsibilities and duties of a husband and a wife and the mystical properties that relationship shares with the one that exists between Christ and the church. And once again we're told that a man who is to love a woman with the love of Christ, and a woman who is to submit to that man as the church does to Christ, shall be one flesh. They shall be one flesh. Just as the church becomes the body of Christ, the man and the woman become one flesh. And they shall be one flesh. They shall not be married, they shall not be covenanted. They shall be one flesh.
I have enlisted the scholarly help of our learned member @ABlessedMan to help me with the links between 1 Corinthians 6 and Ephesians 5 and whatever the significance is of the lack of "leave and cleave" in 1 Corinthians 6:16. For the moment I am not making the claim that sex ="marriage." I am asserting confidently that when Christ describes my relationship to @windblown to the angels, He refers to us as being one flesh.
Prove me wrong.
Some of what I'm going to say won't be surprising to some of you and some will. Let's start with the most surprising part, I may be in the throes of an evolution around an aspect of this issue. There's something in 1 Corinthians 6:16 we've all missed and that colors my bumper sticker statement that "sex=marriage." We'll talk about that later. Incidentally, this is not the slam dunk I teased in a different thread. That particular slam dunk will be in this post, but because of the new insights into 1 Corinthians 6:16 may force me to take on a more nuanced position, I can't in good faith currently declare the debate over.
What will not surprise those of you who you have followed this debate is that I still maintain that the phrase "one flesh" is how the Bible describes the relationship we've mislabeled (and then misdefined) as "marriage". By looking at every instance of the use of the phrase "one flesh" in the Bible I believe this claim becomes very difficult for the honest examiner to deny.
An examination of every verse that contains the phrase "one flesh" does not take very long. There are only 6. Here is the comprehensive list: Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:5-6 with two occurrences, Mark 10:8 which has two occurrences in the single verse, the controversial 1 Corinthians 6:16 which is unique in all of scripture in its use of the phrase, and one we've never discussed before, the aforementioned slam dunk, Ephesians 5:31, itself controversial throughout all of Christendom. Let's do a quick overview of all five passages.
Genesis 2:24 - This is where it all begins. God has just brought Eve to Adam for the first time and after relating the details of the meeting the narrator of the story leaves the narrative to give us commentary on the significance of the passage, the first time this happens in scripture as far as I can tell. The verse reads, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." This is the original use of the phrase and the establishment of the relationship between a man and a woman that we've incorrectly labeled "marriage". Every other use of the phrase "one flesh" is a direct quote of this foundational passage, with one possible exception. Almost everything we know about the universal concept of a "marriage" is contained in this verse. Everything else we're given is either a derivative of this verse or a limited subset of it. Fascinatingly this is the only place in the Old Testament that the phrase occurs.
Matthew 19:5-6 - In this passage the Pharisees have attempted to test Jesus by asking Him a difficult passage involving putting away a woman. Jesus prefaces His answer by quoting Genesis 2:24, repeating the last part of the verse, "Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh," reinforcing the importance of that segment of the verse. He then adds a powerful conclusion, "What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder." These two verses make it impossible for me to not recognize the phrase "one flesh" as the name God uses for what we describe as "marriage". We'll go in depth on this momentarily.
Mark 10:8 - In this passage the Pharisees are again testing Jesus around the topic of divorce and again, starting in verse 7, He quotes Genesis 2:24 and again He repeats the final line of the verse for added emphasis; "so they are no more twain, but one flesh." I am unsure if this is the same instance that was relayed to us in Matthew 19:5-6 or a different instance. I've heard it taught both ways. I believe the consensus on this forum is that these are separate events; one dealing with lawful divorce and one dealing with unlawful putting away. But again, I am unclear on that aspect of the two accounts.
1 Corinthians 6:16 - Alright, this is where all of the controversy starts. A brief overview of this verse is very difficult to do. In typical Pauline fashion it's not even clear exactly where the thought starts. It may be in verse 12, verse 13 touches on fornication but by verse 15 Paul has gotten to this point about making the members of Christ the members of a harlot. He further complicates the matter by veering from the template we've seen so far. He does not quote the entirety of Genesis 2:24 but only the phrase, "for two, saith he, shall be one flesh." The phrase is not repeated a second time for emphasis as it was by Christ, also the context of the verse does not make it clear that we are dealing with a man and woman who exist in the state of "marriage," as the previous three passages do. However, the next teaching Paul launches in to after he wraps up this one at the end of the chapter are an important series of teachings on sex inside the relationship we call "marriage." Chapter 7 contains a number of important teachings around sex, marriage and divorce that extend all of the way through to verse 17. The verses in chapter 6 starting somewhere around verse 12 seem to be artificially separated from the verse around "marriage" in chapter 7. That being said, the radically different formulation of 1 Corinthians 6:16 from the other passages quoting Genesis 2:24 requires study and explanation.
Ephesian 5:31 - The aforementioned slam dunk which I still think is quite difficult to disprove. Ephesians 5 is the New Testament passage, and possibly of the whole of scripture, that tells us how followers of Jesus are to conduct their "marriages". This is the famous submission passage where husbands are commanded to love their wives with the love of Christ and wives are commanded to submit to their husbands in all things as the church does to Christ. If you want to start a fight this is the passage to do it with. The "one flesh" quote is contained in verse 31 and here Paul returns to quoting the entirety of Genesis 2:24, although he does not repeat the last sentence for emphasis as Christ does in Matthew and Mark.
What should not be missed however is verse 30 which is repeating themes for 1 Corinthians 6:16 that link the "one flesh" relationship between a man and a woman to the concept of Christians being members of the body of Christ, tying 1 Corinthians 6:16 closer to the concept of "marriage" without negating the need to study more in depth the truncated quote of Genesis 2:24 found therein.
There you have it, all of the instances of the use of the phrase "one flesh" in the Bible. The vast majority of them are found in quotes of Genesis 2:24 or in that verse itself. It's always found in proximity to "marriage" (there is one verse I have left out of this discussion that uses the words "one" and "flesh" sequentially but only to denote the number of fleshes involved in the idea, not as a unique state of two fleshes being one).
So why does any of this mean that we should eschew the word "marriage" for the phrase "one flesh"? It's important at this stage to remind everyone what my thesis is, I am proposing that when we speak about the relationship that exists between a man and woman, that can make them liable to the charger of adultery, that we should refer to that relationship as "one flesh" and not "marriage". In fact, from now on I will only be using the phrase one flesh, and will be deleting the air quotes, when I write about the subject here or when I'm in conversation with those I won't have to make a long winded explanation to.
My reasoning is simple and should be obvious at this point. At the end of Genesis 2:24 the man and woman are described as persisting in a state called one flesh. It says "they shall be one flesh." It is a statement that designates the category of their relationship going forward. They are not "married" or "covenanted," they shall be one flesh. One flesh is what they're going to be.
This is of course undeniably reinforced in Matthew and Mark. When Christ is asked about putting away a woman, He quotes the Genesis verse and expounds on it by repeating and emphasizing that "they are no more twain, but one flesh." The opposite of a man and woman being separate is being one flesh. He goes on immediately to say that "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." God has fused the two into one flesh and man shouldn't separate that. Because they are one flesh and because God Himself is somehow a part of forming that one flesh, divorce should not happen. Again, the one flesh is integral to the teaching on divorce, in fact the divorce is the undoing of one flesh. There is no divorce outside of one flesh.
That brings us to 1 Corinthians 6:16, a contentious verse that I'm going to skip over for now for reasons that I've laid out already. I suspect that the connections between 1 Corinthians 6 and Ephesians 5 vis a vis the body of Christ and the allegory of one flesh are going to take a lot of time and study to unravel. I am not confident that I am capable of accomplishing it. But while there are seemingly important elements left out of the 1 Corinthians 6 one flesh, it is contained within broader and important teachings about how to conduct the one flesh relationship. It is not at all clear that these subtractions change the nature of the one flesh relationship described in 1 Corinthians 6. In fact it could simply be that their absence is why that type of one flesh relationship shouldn't be formed, since it could of necessity lead to adultery through an unlawful putting away.
And if all that wasn't enough, we come to Ephesians 5:31. Here we get the most powerful and encompassing description of the responsibilities and duties of a husband and a wife and the mystical properties that relationship shares with the one that exists between Christ and the church. And once again we're told that a man who is to love a woman with the love of Christ, and a woman who is to submit to that man as the church does to Christ, shall be one flesh. They shall be one flesh. Just as the church becomes the body of Christ, the man and the woman become one flesh. And they shall be one flesh. They shall not be married, they shall not be covenanted. They shall be one flesh.
I have enlisted the scholarly help of our learned member @ABlessedMan to help me with the links between 1 Corinthians 6 and Ephesians 5 and whatever the significance is of the lack of "leave and cleave" in 1 Corinthians 6:16. For the moment I am not making the claim that sex ="marriage." I am asserting confidently that when Christ describes my relationship to @windblown to the angels, He refers to us as being one flesh.
Prove me wrong.
