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0: When does marriage begin? - Structured discussion
- Thread starter FollowingHim
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And round and round we go...
Yes, the Bible teaches us that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her, for “the two,” he says “shall become one body.” (1 Cor 5:5). And that is the problem with calling the one flesh union a marriage by definition. Since marriage is what God brings together, and God does not so such thing (polyandry is sin, see Gen 20:2-6). If having intercourse is the one flesh union, and the one flesh union is marriage, then what is the problem with adultery?
So we read that a woman can become one flesh with multiple men, but they are not considered her husbands (marriages) in Gods eyes. On the contrary, it is an illegal one-flesh union. Therefore Paul said, two verses later (v. 8), to flee sexual immorality and that it is a sin against ones own body. (The harlot is not married to another man, therefore it is not adultery.)
Note what Paul said at the end of his instruction on marriage. He refers to virgins being “given in marriage,” and for a widow to be married to whom she wishes, “but only in the Lord.” (1 Cor 7:38-39). In Pauls days, marriage was as much of a common thing as in our days, but true marriage is what God created on the sixth day, as Jesus also said: “what God joins together.” So, one could say the the one-flesh union is marriage, but not by definition. Not all one-flesh unions are marriages in the Biblical sense. The one flesh union is a marriage only if the woman is given (or gave herself) to the man in the Lord.
But one flesh is the phrase that is used by Christ to describe “marriage” as the phrase used in the Creation account to describe the first “marriage.” So, if you lie with a harlot Jesus says you married her. Moses agrees. Mazeltov! This of course means that sex forms a marriage. You will be unable to find any other scripture to say otherwise. I encourage you to look. Many men have. None have succeeded.
One flesh is the only standard given for forming a marriage. There is an interesting side bar about a betrothed woman being able to commit adultery. It’s a fun rabbit trail but she is identified as betrothed, not mastered so it’s not relevant.
Jesus also said that marriage is “what God joins together.” Would you suggest God joins the harlot to her clients in marriage?
If you believe having intercourse with a harlot is making her your wife, your idea on the nature of marriage is polygamy rather than polygyny, because the harlot has intercourse with many men. But we know from Scripture, that it is a sin for a woman to have more than one husband. God prevented it to happen with Sarah and called it a sin (Ex 20:2-6). Furthermore, the text in 1 Corinthians 6, speaking of the one flesh union with a harlot, tells us that it is a sin and sexual immorality. Besides, the image of marriage is used to illustrate God’s relationship with His people. But when the people go after other gods, it is called adultery and harlotry.
Well, allow Moses to answer:
Deuteronomy 22:28-29
28“If a man finds a young woman who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are found out,
29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has humbled her; he shall not be permitted to divorce her all his days.”
Moses said “she shall become his wife,” not, “she has become his wife.” (Now, we must not equal the humbling of the virgin to marriage. The humbling is related to the prohibition to divorce her.)
And in Exodus 22:16-17 Moses said:
16“If a man entices a virgin who is not betrothed, and lies with her, he shall surely pay the bride-price for her to be his wife.
17 If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money according to the bride-price of virgins.”
So, the father was allowed to refuse giving her in marriage (and to give her to someone else). According to Moses (and Paul), intercourse in not marriage by definition, but it does obligate the man to take her as his wife.
So what makes a marriage? Paul says sex makes you one flesh with a harlot, Moses taking a virgin endows her to be your wife. You’re relying on idiosyncrasies in the English translation to try and deny it so you tell me.
What forms a “marriage” according to scripture?
And your take on Exodus 22:16-17 is very flawed. It says she will be his wife but if her father “utterly refuse” to give her to him he only pays the bride price. There is no mention in there anywhere of whether or not she can remarry. You are bringing a bost load of assumptions to the passage.
In fact this is one of the passages I point to as proving my point. The simple act of lying with her established a “marriage” that had a caveat to it. The implication is that if the man could get away with the woman there was nothing the father could do about it.
What is the point in writing this?
I always find this debate to be an interesting one. I lean in a particular direction which probably isn't difficult to discern, but it always appears to me that both sides have some good arguments. While I wait to see if anyone can rise to the occasion of providing the scriptural evidence @The Revolting Man has once again challenged his opponents to provide (I certainly haven't been able to find it), I do want to make one extended point related to part of @Van's assertions:
This is a fractured logic chain consisting of a number of flawed syllogisms. To legitimize the logic chain would require, at minimum, resolving the following:
And this is part of what YHWH has written on our hearts: the knowledge that part of the point of the Law is to emphasize the inescapability from sin. We are guilty, we are thus in need of Redemption we cannot accomplish on our own, and we have no business making it our business to condemn others for their sin. As members of the Body of Christ, we are washed in the Blood of the Lamb and are thus freed from our sin, but as individuals we can take no credit or glory for that.
This is a fractured logic chain consisting of a number of flawed syllogisms. To legitimize the logic chain would require, at minimum, resolving the following:
- Where in scripture does it say that every marriage is put together by YHWH?
- If not all marriages are put together by YHWH, then your logic chain fails.
- Tangent: if every marriage is put together by YHWH, then what need would exist for any kind of marriage covenant or contract?
- Partial tangent: what isn't orchestrated by YHWH? (not completely a tangent, because it relates to whether one-flesh union is marriage)
- If, as in Genesis 20:2-6 (and I can't resist adding in here that I believe Leviticus 18:22 is almost universally mistranslated and is instead an even more pointed prohibition against polyandry), YHWH prohibits polyandry among his chosen people, does that mean He is prohibited from violating the law He insists His chosen people follow? He also created many other creatures, some of which very naturally practice polyandry. To which of His creatures is YHWH bound to being identical in nature? Please don't fall back on us being made in His Image to explain this away, because Scripture simply does not assert that we are made 100% in His Image. We are only partially made in His Image, because to be made 100% in His Image, He would have had to make us Gods. Until this conundrum in your logic chain is resolved, it will remain in question -- and thus still fractured.
- "If having intercourse is the one flesh union, and the one flesh union is marriage, then what is the problem with adultery?" The answer to this is that the problem is that it's a violation of an explicit commandment. You're conflating concepts, and by so doing, you ask an absurd question that appears to prove that something about the second supposition is false, but it does no such thing, because whether or not the one-flesh union equals marriage has no bearing on whether adultery is a problem. Adultery is a problem for us by virtue of the fact that YHWH prohibits it for us. Your logic chain remains fractured by this absurdity (it's a very common and thus easily-forgivable error and is promoted with great vigor by the top echelons of both Judaism and Christendom, but that doesn't stop it from being absurd).
- To me, your next paragraph ends up arguing against itself, which just adds to the fractured nature of the logic. You want to put marriage up onto its own tradition-laden pedestal in such a way that it remains entirely distinct from what a harlot does, but it is only human tradition and not Scripture that affords you the pathway for oversimplifying these issues. Both Yeshua and Sha'ul are clear in their statements, but they do not oversimplify it for us. We are left to wrestle with the conundrums associated with the complications of life. Where do you find in Scripture support for your statement that having sex with a prostitute does not constitute adultery? Only through assumption, because you are assuming, based on your definition of marriage (which can be traced back to the early Church Fathers and further on back to the Pharisees, etc.), that only the types of unions you support are real marriages. But it seems clear to me (absent the scriptural passage I haven't yet found that asserts that sex with harlots isn't adultery) that both Yeshua and Sha'ul were warning us that sex with a prostitute is indeed adultery, because, unless one is the first customer, one is having sex with a woman who is already married to not just one man but multiple other men -- and now you're one of her husbands to boot. Prostitutes weren't granted some kind of scriptural exemption from the one-flesh rule -- at least not that I can find.
And this is part of what YHWH has written on our hearts: the knowledge that part of the point of the Law is to emphasize the inescapability from sin. We are guilty, we are thus in need of Redemption we cannot accomplish on our own, and we have no business making it our business to condemn others for their sin. As members of the Body of Christ, we are washed in the Blood of the Lamb and are thus freed from our sin, but as individuals we can take no credit or glory for that.
Jesus said in Matthew 19: “So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
If we can agree that Jesus was speaking of marriage, then Jesus said that marriage is “what God has joined together.” And indeed, it also speaks of the two (they in OT) become one flesh.
The joining together is what God does, the becoming one flesh is what the two do.
Now the questions are:
If we can agree that Jesus was speaking of marriage, then Jesus said that marriage is “what God has joined together.” And indeed, it also speaks of the two (they in OT) become one flesh.
The joining together is what God does, the becoming one flesh is what the two do.
Now the questions are:
- Are we also speaking of ‘marriage’ (Biblically) if only the “becoming one flesh” part is done, without God joining the two together?
- Or does the “becoming one flesh” ‘make’ God to join the two (even if multiple men are involved as with a prostitute)?
- Or Is it possible to “become one flesh” illegally (Biblically, as in rebelling against Gods will to join the two together as with adultery and prostitution)?
The answer to the third question is, Yes. Sha'ul/Paul declares that a man becomes one flesh with a prostitute, and Scripture elsewhere condemns prostitution (Deuteronomy 23; Proverbs 23), so, ipso facto, it is a one-flesh violation of the Law.
Before we can even come close to answering the 1st or the 2nd questions, you would have to articulate what you believe constitutes YHWH joining the two together. What do you believe is the evidence of that joining together? And what is the scriptural support for your belief?
But what are your answers to the other two questions?
18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
John 4:18 | ESV
What does Jesus mean here? The word for, have had, is the word used for, have, so why is the last fellow she has now not her husband, but the other five were?
John 4:18 | ESV
What does Jesus mean here? The word for, have had, is the word used for, have, so why is the last fellow she has now not her husband, but the other five were?
As I said:
Except...”only in the Lord” (1 Cor 7:39).
So from what I read in Scripture, there is the thing man does (exchange of headship followed by intercourse) and there is the thing God does (joining the two together). The first part only constitutes ‘marriage’ if the second part is included. And we know when it is not. God would not join a woman to multiple husbands, or two of the same sex, etc. Without the second part, it is a fake marriage, not Biblical.
Good point!
And where is this articulated in scripture. The phrase “what God has joined together” does not explain how God joins them together. In fact the whole passage is about dissolving a marriage not forming one. The phrase is being used out of context if you’re applying it to forming a “marriage”.
So again, where in scripture are we told how God joins two people together? We all accept that He does, which is what the phrase “what God has joined together” indicates. Now we need to see HOW He does.
This is the best argument for sex not forming a marriage in all of scripture. Since we’re not given the details we can’t draw any rules for forming a marriage from this incidental mention but a few possibilities present themselves. The most obvious is that she hasn’t had sex with the current man, and this would explain her astonishment at Jesus telling her an intimate detail of her life.
If the man wasn’t her husband because there hadn’t been a public ceremony or some kind; i.e. a ketubah signing or some other such un-Biblical nonsense, it wouldn’t be surprising to the woman that this was known. The private details of her boudoir though would be much more surprising. In whole I think the woman at the well seems to support my position but again, the story wasn’t about forming a marriage nor were we given any details of the situation so we can’t draw any details on the topic. Far better we stick with the passages that actually deal with the forming of one flesh.
I've already stated that you need to demonstrate what "constitutes YHWH joining the two together" before we can answer the questions you've posed that hypothetically presuppose that YHWH has not joined the two together.
You are asking the equivalent of questions like, "Can we give credit to George Harrison for writing the melody for My Sweet Lord if we imagine that he wasn't contemplating She's So Fine while he was doing it?" How would we know whether George was or wasn't contemplating She's So Fine? Right?
I'm not the only one asking you this question. If you assert that it is your opinion that the john/hooker union isn't a marriage because your opinion is that YHWH didn't join the two together and that it is your opinion that one doesn't have to have any way of knowing whether YHWH does or doesn't join two together before having such an opinion, then I'd have no argument with you. We all have our opinions, and we all also have the right to have our own faith beliefs for which we have no evidence. However, when you cite Scripture, it's simply inadequate to take a verse or two and then say, "Ah ha! See? Yeshua said, 'What YHWH has joined together, let no man tear apart.' See? That proves that certain unions aren't marriages because YHWH didn't join them together." That's just not good enough. At a bare minimum, if you make statements you declare to be authoritative about this, you have to provide us with evidence that demonstrates how you know that YHWH didn't join certain people together. Where in Scripture is that standard? And, while some would consider them authoritative, I'm not going to take the word of the Talmud, papal encyclicals, the writings of the (generally-corrupt) Early Church Fathers or Guideposts. Where, to the best of our abilities, can we find references in His Word that explain how we are to know that YHWH has joined certain people together. See, @The Revolting Man and I and others can point to a multitude of verses that pair up becoming one flesh with marriage; if that isn't what our Messiah was referring to when He spoke of His Father joining together in the wake of just having mentioned the one-flesh requirement, then you should be able to discover some evidence for your assertion elsewhere in Scripture.
There is this one translation my mother used to quote to me from called The Ecumenical New Age Sunday School Version, and its rendering of Matthew 19:5-6 is, "And the blessed Virgin Jesus said, 'My Father has established that only romantic pairings that He has approved through the authority of His ordained ministers shall justifiably result in copulation. When a man and a woman do that, they become one flesh, but it isn't a marriage unless He grants his blessing upon the union by spiritually checking for the presence of a covenant being in place that promises that He will be put first at all times. If He approves, He calls that joining them together, and they will not only be blessed but will be protected from others trying to get them to break up their marriage. On the other hand, if they become one flesh without being joined together by Him, He will afflict them with hairy palms and sexually-transmitted diseases, because He's not about to let them get away with such behavior without some serious consequences. And don't even think you can escape this by doing it with the lights off, because He can see you in the dark as well as in the light."
However, I learned early on not to trust anything my mother quoted to me from her Bible.