Marriage plus?

What, from a Biblical perspective, makes a marriage? The answer is usually taken for granted and rarely carefully considered in the light of Scripture. The general idea is a 'Christian wedding' makes a legitimate marriage. But the Biblical pattern, found Genesis 1 and 2, is different and establishes the principle that the first marriage lays down for all time the essential nature of marriage.

The simple arrangement described in Genesis 1 and 2 defines marriage as a human reality, not a theory or religious ritual. If the first marriage wasn't a true marriage then Adam and Eve were never man and wife and could never have provided the Lord Jesus with the pattern of marriage he insisted on: Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female'. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate. (Matthew 19.4-6)

This pattern cannot be altered by human cultures or state laws; not by societal, legal or religious conventions. Whatever constituted the first legitimate marriage determines the constitution of marriage for all time. The God-given pattern in Genesis is not a minimum requirement but the maximum required of any couple for their marriage to be legitimate in the sight of God.

Genesis 2.24 provides the pattern: Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. This divine blue-print was central to the teaching of the Lord Jesus (Matthew 19.3ff and Mark 10.6ff) and the Apostle Paul. Marriage is defined as an agreement between a biological male and a biological female who freely choose to live together in an intimate and permanent relationship (Genesis 2.25; 4.17; 11.29). Marriage reflects the inner life of the Holy Trinity: a loving, self-giving, equal companionship.

Scripture introduces no 'added extras'. All complications are human inventions. These include 'Christian weddings', which are rooted not in Scripture but Jewish customs, Roman civil practices and much later developments of Church tradition.

Jewish weddings in the early patriarchal period (c.2,500 – c.500 bc) involved no formal ceremony. Consummation or co-habitation initiated the marriage. Marriages were tribal, kinship-based alliances with no set ritual or rite, these developed much later and are without any basis in Scripture.

New Testament Christian communities had no fixed liturgy for weddings. A wedding was a private or civil matter. It was centuries later that the Catholic Church introduce a wedding liturgy with its declaration that marriage is a 'sacrament'. Protestants have always rejected that idea and viewed marriage as a civil institution, administered by the state or community, sometimes with an optional church blessing.

When we look in the Bible for specific legislation about marriage we find no definitions, descriptions or prescriptions concerning the requirements for marriage in addition to those in Genesis 1 and 2. There is no guidance to what a wedding might be and no demand for a wedding. Nowhere does the Bible stipulate any form of 'engagement' or 'betrothal'. And nowhere does it stipulate a 'wedding ceremony' is required to legitimise a marriage in the sight of God. Following this principal The Westminster Confession of Faith and The Baptist Confession of Faith 1689 omit any reference to 'weddings' when they refer to marriage.

Whatever a so-called 'Christian wedding' may be, it is not found in the Bible. Scripture describes certain weddings and wedding customs, but gives no warrant for the culture of weddings developed in our society: exchanging rings, 'giving away' the bride, white dresses and veils, wedding gifts or vows.

It has to be understood that a description of an event in Scripture never constitutes a Biblical precept, obligation or command. The Bible describes weddings but does not demand what it describes must be copied. Biblical descriptions do not constitute Christian obligations.

The essential element is 'cleaving', free consent based on mutual understanding and agreement (Genesis 24.58). Consent is realised when a man and woman take each other, 'cleave' to each other, with mutual agreement, and, leaving their parents' control (though not necessarily the parental home) establish a new partnership together. This new union is, in Biblical terms, 'one flesh': a new family unit. 'Leaving' does not necessarily imply a geographical relocation, but a change of perspectives and priorities, from those of a single life to those of a shared life. 'Leaving' brings a shift of priorities. The married couple now recognise and respond to the newly established order of priorities. This 'leaving' is a change of status, from a primary submission to parents, to a primary commitment of the couple to each other. 'Leaving' the marriage, in the case of 'desertion', is the rejection of that commitment in favour of selfish autonomy.

The Christian is duty-bound to comply with the laws of the state. If those laws insist on a wedding, civil or ecclesiastical, the Christian must comply. Otherwise a 'Christian wedding', according to personal taste, is optional. But it is not possible to claim Scriptural support for such a ceremony. Nor is it permissible to question the legitimacy of a marriage that follows the Scriptural pattern but chooses not to include a wedding ceremony. The decision to forego a wedding ceremony in a culture of mindless extravagance and wicked excess might be considered a virtue!

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Ethics, 128,130) sums-up the Biblical definition of marriage: 'Marriage is the union of two human beings as human beings on the basis of the free decision of the individual. Marriages are not concluded either by the Church or by the state, and it is not solely from these institutions that they derive their title. Marriage is concluded rather by the two partners. The fact that a marriage is performed publicly in the presence of the state or the presence of the Church signifies no more than the civil and ecclesiastical public recognition of marriage and its own inherent rights.'