Shailer Mathews

“ Adultery may be committed even when lust never passes beyond the licentious glance. [14] In the same proportion as the natural sanctity of marriage is injured, in the same proportion is the nature of man outraged and ideal fraternity broken. To dishonor this first of human relationships is to loosen the bonds of society, to lower present social ideals, to do injury to the essential nature of both the man and the woman. It was, therefore, not in the spirit of a purist or a fanatic that Jesus thus put checks upon divorce, but in that of the ethical and social philosopher. ”

“ And yet while Jesus thus recognizes the physical basis of marriage, he never regards it as in any way sinful or ignoble; so far is he removed from the perversions that an ascetic faith has so frequently forced upon humanity. As long as human nature and human relations are as they are, so long will marriage be the first human tie. For it ties otherwise the closest are to be broken. Filial dependence, the family itself are to yield before the marital union and the future family. But the physical is not the only, nor is it the permanent element in marriage. ”

“ As in the case of the position of women, his ideal of the family is dynamic. Here, as in so much of his work, the real significance of Jesus lies farthest from that of a mere tabulator of duties. He could afford to leave his ideal society with its details not filled in, because with the ideal he gave also evolutionary forces. Once possessed by the ideal of brotherhood, and once, be it never so feebly, under the influence of these spiritual forces, each generation could be trusted to transform the world in which it lived into a greater or less approximation to the kingdom. ”

“ But this, as we have already seen, does not exhaust the social principles of Jesus. Humanity can be normally social only when it is fraternal. The ideal is not merely a union, but a union of brothers. And what is thus true of society in the aggregate is true also of its various institutions. There too must fraternity be the ideal and the test of normality. This principle is not hard to trace, but in some particulars it has singularly escaped attention. In nothing, however, is it more apparent than in Christ's teaching in regard to the family. ”

“ Just as this ideal society is independent of physical bounds and changing physical elements, so, we may infer, is the ultimate basis of the marriage relation to be found in spiritual rather than physical unity. Between man and wife here is to be a union in spirit that springs from a love that is not mere passion, but is volitional and moral. When physical surroundings have passed away, then will the spiritual union, which must have accompanied the physical, survive, and the completed family become even more apparently like the completed society, a psychical union. ”

“ Marriage has a divine origin. Husband and wife are joined together by God, so that they are no longer two but one. It is noteworthy that Jesus thus regards marriage as monogamous—not indeed as the result of an evolving conventionality, but as the result of the divine creative act. [1] Monogamy is thus regarded by him as the only normal, the only divine basis of family relations. By this reaffirmation of the noble social teaching of Moses, [2] Jesus sets his disapproval upon all forms of plural marriage, whether legal or illegal. ”

“ So long as marriage is not a mere matter of law, of conventionality, but is one expression of the fundamental social nature of man in both its physical and spiritual expression; and so long as it is monogamous, to be characterized by the modesty that is possible alone in such a relation; so long must it be unbreakable by statute. Divorce by Jesus is regarded as impossible, except as a formal recognition of an already broken union. As marriage gives rise to an actual union of personalities, it can be broken only by an actual severance of this union. ”

“ Jesus does not command a divorce even in the most extreme cases. His recognition of the possibility of such a course of action is, so to speak, parenthetic. The ideal of brotherhood and the need of reconciliation would certainly favor a maintenance of old relations even after divorce is permissible. Forgiveness and reconciliation are as much the supreme needs in the family as at the altar. ”

“ As with him the new social order was to be a family with God as its father and men as its children, so with them the church was the bride of the Lamb, and every fatherhood and family in heaven and on earth was named of that great Father before whom they daily bowed the knee. ”

“ Thus here, as in other social relations, the spiritual union must supplement and ennoble the physical. "If trust be incomplete, marriage, we know, cannot have its perfect work. If trust be broken, marriage perishes. But by interchange of thought and hope and prayer in marriage, trust ripens into faith." [4]
It is unnecessary for the appreciation of this position of Jesus to follow him in his terminology. It is of little or no consequence whether the basis of this conception of the marriage relation be regarded as a literal divine word or as human nature itself ”

“ It follows from this noble conception of marriage that woman is placed by Jesus upon a plane of equality with man. She is neither the creature of his fancy, nor is she in a relation of either real or formal subjection. ”

“ While among the Romans the steady emancipation through which woman was passing was winning only the contempt of the professional moralist and the laughter of the writer of comedy; and while in Judea the noble ideal of motherhood was being lowered by the ease by which divorce might be obtained; with Jesus there is neither a recognition of a past subjection of woman, an attempt at her emancipation, nor a lament over the difficulties to be foreseen in the enforcement of his teaching in regard to marriage. ”

“ On the other hand, it may be urged with far more force that Jesus never expressly attacked those social customs that force woman into infamy, or those conventionalities that have for centuries made her politically and legally the inferior of man; in short, that he never poses as the champion of the rights of women. ”

“ From the very method of his teaching Jesus must needs have started with some absolute ideal to which he might compare spiritual relations, and which, already understood, would make intelligible that which was difficult to understand. Other teachers have felt the same need, and this highest type of holiest relations has been found in many things—numerical harmonies, nature, the state. Jesus found it in the family. Even among evil men the paternal instinct gives good gifts and the deception of a child is unthinkable. ”

“ On the contrary, as will presently appear, Jesus, to a surprising degree, anticipated today's belief in the equality of the sexes. It was this as well as the underlying principles of his ideal society that led him in the face of popular opinion thus to formulate these strict statutes. Modern sentiment, like the legislation and the sentiment of the professional teachers of his day, is opposed to such severity in the morals of matrimony. Marriage is assuming much more the character of a legal status than of a natural union. ”

“ In this disregard of the temporary, and in his sublime trust in the salvability of human society and especially in the possibility of recuperation that lies in the health and goodness of social instincts if once they are allowed a normal spiritual environment, Jesus stands infinitely removed from even the best of his followers. They argue where he believes. They legislate where he inspires. ”

“ Throughout the Roman empire there was an appreciable advance in the position of women. Except in the case of the Essenes, among the Jews the wife had always held a relatively high position, and among the Romans this was increasingly true through the neglect of the forms of marriage involving in manu relations. But even after this has been said, no person acquainted with Jewish or Roman life of the first century would deny that Jesus gives woman a position essentially different from that accorded her by either philosophy or custom. ”

“ As one might expect a priori, the family is regarded by Jesus as one manifestation of the essential social character of men. The sexes complement one another as the two halves of a whole. This finds expression in his well-known use of the words and incidents of Genesis. ”

“ Under no circumstances, provided that the marriage union is not actually broken through the unfaithfulness of one of the parties, is a husband to divorce his wife, or a wife her husband. [10] In case there is no such actual breaking of the marriage tie, a husband who puts his wife away, be it never so legally, causes her to be judged as belonging to that class of women who have really given grounds for divorce; he brands her an adulteress. [11] If, on the basis of such divorce she should marry, both she and the new husband commit sin. ”

“ The office of each is necessary, for the apostles, like the Christians of subsequent epochs, must needs incarnate the principles of Jesus in the midst of different social forces They thus form one stage in successive approaches to that new society whose ideal Jesus set before humanity. ”

“ He is here subject to the necessities that surround all those who provide for the common good of society. It is not to the point, therefore, to plead a resulting hardship in specific cases. But it is not so easy to answer the second of these two questions categorically. It is evident that desertion might easily be regarded as a redefinition of "adultery," and that it has good reasons for being admitted on the very grounds by which Jesus establishes his general position. ”

“ But it should again be said that at present we are not so much concerned with the applications of the teaching of Jesus as with the discovery of his conception of the ideal forms of social life. It may very likely yet appear that in an attempt at realizing this ideal, legislators and reformers must, like Moses, concede much to the hardness of men's hearts. ”

“ Jesus, with characteristic tact, grants them their conclusion, but supplies it with premises of a much loftier standard, and in his treatment of the matter presents one of the fundamental teachings of his entire system, viz., that a good thing must always be sacrificed for a better thing. No man, unless like Origen he be utterly blinded by an ascetic and fanatic fervor, could ever misinterpret the intense words in which Jesus expresses this axiom. ”

“ So far as mere legal separation of unequally or ill-matched persons is concerned, the ideal described by Jesus would not antagonize this modern tendency, but the general consent of past and present moral teachers and statesmen agrees with his noble rejection of the admissibility of the scandalous travesties of life's most sacred union, to which nowadays these separations generally lead. ”

“ We are not now concerned with the practicability of such an ideal; it may be too absolute for an imperfect society. But it can at least be suggested that there are yet grounds for hesitation before one admits that the spirit animating this part of the social teaching of Jesus has been materially surpassed by much of today's divorce legislation. ”

“ The carrying of such principles into the details of human relationship, with the accommodation of them to the needs and possibilities of an imperfect society, was left by Jesus especially to his immediate followers. ”

“ Such a contradiction, it must be remembered, does not confront the man who regards marriage as simply a contract which guarantees certain peculiar rights to the two consenting parties. In such a conception law makes and law can unmake the union. But with Jesus marriage is a fact, not a definition. God and nature join; man and law cannot separate. He may be a dreamer. He certainly is not inconsistent. [19]
3. Two further questions are, however, not answered: (1) Would not this position of Jesus admit divorce in case the marriage were broken in its psychical side, though not on its physical ”

“ His first miracle was wrought because of the faith and at the solicitation of his mother. [23] A woman, who because of her grateful faith poured over him the costly ointment, is the only person to whom he promised an immortality of remembrance. ”