Quote 3158
In 1950 the average age at marriage was twenty for women and twenty-two for men; by 2019 those numbers rose to twenty-eight for women and thirty for men.
A. Andrew Das
Remarriage in Early Christianity, Eerdmans, 719.2K
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And it is a mercy to have so near a friend to be a helper to your soul; to join with you in prayer and other holy exercises; to watch over you and tell you of your sins and dangers, and to stir up in you the grace of God, and remember to you of the life to come, and cheerfully accompany you in the ways of holiness.Richard Baxter,A Christian Directoiy: or, Sum ofPractical7heology, and Cases of Conscience, 11.1 (7he Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter [London: James Duncan, 1830], IV, 30).
I take occasion to make the general remark that the great thing I always desired to find was a woman who was a real Christian, who was a real lady, and who was not a fool.AutoBiography (73)
In allowing divorce under these circumstances, it is striking, nevertheless, that Matthew does not say that the aggrieved husband could remarry. The absolute form of Jesus's teaching in Mark and Luke warns against simply assuming that the divorced husband enjoys that freedom.Remarriage in Early Christianity, 157
The New Testament often distinguishes πορνεία from μοιχεία (Matt 15:19; Mark 7:21; 1 Cor 6:9; Heb 13:4). Matthew regularly uses μοιχεία and its cognate verbal forms (e.g., Matt 5:32; 19:9!) and yet chooses πορνεία for the exception clauses.Remarriage in Early Christianity, 137
Jesus therefore opposed how mainstream Judaism before, during, and after his earthly ministry viewed divorce and remarriage.Remarriage in Early Christianity, 82, Eerdmans
As a rough generalization historical Jesus researchers and early Christian specialists working in the ante-Nicene (and even post-Nicene) period are more likely to affirm that early ecclesiastical authors denied the possibility of remarriage after divorce while the former spouse still lived.Remarriage in Early Christianity, Eerdmans, 12
Modern cultural assumptions, personal predilections, denominational divisions, and life experiences are all too easily read back upon the ancient world. The social location of the researcher is always a factor.Remarriage in Early Christianity, Eerdmans, 9
Marriage is called a yoke, too heavy for one alone to bear; therefore, each had a mutual help, a wife. In the participation of good, compassion of evil, in health the best delight, in sickness the best comfort; the sole companion to whom we may communicate our joys and into whose bosom we unload our sorrows. Thus are our griefs lessened, our joys enlarged, our hearts solaced.
crucially, "second marriages" are discussed frequently and explicitly in the context of widows but never in the context of divorce. That absence is conspicuous and telling.Remarriage in Early Christianity, 279
Jesus teaching in both Mark and Luke would have been taken as shocking, countercultural, and absolute. These authors would have needed to provide their reading indication that divorce would be acceptable in certain instances. After the absolute statements, the readers could not be expected to assume it.Remarriage in Early Christianity, 104, Eerdmans
Remarriage is categorically censured as a matter of priestly holiness in one sector of Second Temple Judaism. While divorce was permitted, the Qumran scrolls in multiple places warn against illicit remarriage;Remarriage in Early Christianity, 51-52, Eerdmans
Many scholars now consider the Damascus Document fragment 4Qdf 3 10-15 decisive evidence that CD IV, 20-21 should indeed be interpreted in terms of a prohibition of remarriage while the first wife was still alive (and not strictly polygyny)Remarriage in Early Christianity, Eerdmans, 50
Christian authors as early as Tertullian openly promoted the tradition of the univira and the idea that widows must remain single and not remarry. He exhorted his own wife to remain ad univiratum as a widow. A number of Christian epitaphs likewise celebrate the univira in their ranks (CIL 10.7196; ICLV 1581). The Roman ideal was thus reprised in Latin Christianity in the WestRemarriage in Early Christianity, Eerdmans, 43
Language associated with the univira tradition parallels the apostle Paul's in Rom 7:1-3 and 1 Cor 7:39... The wife is subject to the husband while he lives, and only his death brings about freedom. In the tradition of the univira, the wife does not avail herself of that freedom.Remarriage in Early Christianity, Eerdmans, 42
Despite the fact that actual marriages rarely emulated this ideal, during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian historians and commentators still held concerning the ideal Roman marriage that the wife should be married only once during her lifetime and praised as a univira, that the wife should obey her husband, and that the marriage would last a lifetime and be brought to an end by spousal death alone, if even then.Remarriage in Early Christianity, Eerdmans, 41
The ancients often celebrated the single, eternal union. One wife's tombstone inscription conveys that the marriage is coniugi perpetuae, a perpetual or unceasing martial union (Carm. Epigr. 1571.3).Remarriage in Early Christianity, Eerdmans, 40
For many ancient Romans the marital union remained permanent, even in the face of the death of a spouse. The eternal union would survive deathRemarriage in Early Christianity, Eerdmans, 38
Headship is the divine calling of a husband to take
primary responsibility for Christlike servant-leadership, protection, and provision in the home.
Submission is the divine calling of a wife to honor
and affirm her husband's leadership, and help carry it
through according to her gifts.
A wife takes sanctuary not only in her husband's house but in his heart. The tree of love should grow up in the family as the tree of life grew up in the garden. They that choose their love should love their choice. They that marry where they affect not will affect where they marry not. Two joined together without love are but two tied together to make one another miserable.
Marry neither only or chiefly for beauty, by the eye; nor for honor, by the ear; nor for money or wealth, by the hand; but find out a meet helper, a suitable yoke fellow, one whom you are sure you shall love because you do love her, and that too for her virtues and qualifications, so decently lodged, that you cannot but be pleased to dwell with them. To conclude this particular about the choice of a wife and conversation with a wife, let me mind you what wisdom itself advises—namely, to marry in the Lord.
As for the qualifications of a husband or wife, I would advise all to look at true religion in the first place, that those that marry may be said to marry in the Lord. Next to religion, I should commend a suitable disposition and a conformity in manners, that man and wife may delight in the society and converse one of another. And as I would not have a man or woman marry merely or chiefly by their eyes or fancies, so neither would I advise a marriage betwixt those that have an averseness or antipathy at first sight each to other.
It is not evil to marry but good to be wary. Puritan Golden Treasury
He that is free from a wife may frame his choice to his mind, but he that hath chosen must frame his mind to his choice. Before, he might conform his actions to his affections; now he must endeavor to frame his affection according to his action.
Despite the Pauline texts explicitly allowing it, if the remarriage of widows required extensive discussion and justification, how much more would remarriage after divorce had that been viewed as an option?Remarriage in Early Christianity, 279
As Matthew writes for a Jewish audience sensitive to the pressures (or, for many, requirement) to divorce the sexually unfaithful, an absolute prohibition of divorce would have been a stumbling block. Matthew's Jesus clarifies that the prohibition did not keep the husbands from divorcing adulterous wives, as expected in their legal traditions. Divorce would be permissible in these circumstances.Remarriage in Early Christianity, 155
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