In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul says that the Christian widow should marry “in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39). Some have suggested that the language, grammatically speaking, is adverbial, thus modifying the verb “marry,” rather than being adjectival, i.e., identifying the status of the marriage partner. The meaning of the phrase, then, is supposed to be that she is to marry in harmony with the Lord’s will, i.e., in such a way as to not surrender her faith. Such a grammatical distinction hardly dissolves the difficulty. Is it the Lord’s will that his people form intimate unions with those who have little, if any, sympathy for his redemptive purpose? Is the Savior pleased when his follower subordinates the highest of spiritual interests to those that primarily are physical and emotional? I have never encountered the gospel preacher who will encourage the Christian to marry an unbeliever. Why is that? Such entanglements generally are characterized as unwise, foolish, dangerous, etc.; yet apologists for these mismatches sometimes contend that there is no spiritual deficiency at all in making such foolish choices. Such a view, in my judgment, has a focus that is much too narrow, i.e., it looks only at the validity of the union itself and does not consider a broader range of issues (e.g., motive and eternal aspiration). Most scholars, it would appear to me, are either unaware of or unpersuaded by the adverbial argument. The phrase monon en kurio (“only in [the] Lord”) is generally viewed as signifying that she is to seek a Christian companion. •Arndt and Gingrich suggested that “marry in the Lord = marry a Christian” (1967, 259). •Harold Mare asserts that the phrase means “the woman should marry only a Christian” (1976, 237). •Marion Soards writes that these women “are to marry Christian men” (1999, 165). •Ellicott notes that Paul’s phrase “distinctly implies that it is to be a marriage with a Christian” (1887, 139). •Fitzmyer contends that “only in the Lord” means “marry a Christian” (Horst Balz & Gerhard Schneider, Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, 1991, 2:442). This clearly is the prevailing view among Greek authorities and Bible expositors. (For further study Woods 1976, 91.) A study of Paul’s use of “in the Lord” (or an equivalent expression) elsewhere is very illuminating. For instance, “in the Lord” is parallel to being a “saint” in Romans 16:2. We might add this thought: if such was Paul’s instruction with reference to the experienced widow, would a more relaxed view have been entertained regarding the marriage of the even more vulnerable young virgin?
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:47:16 +0000
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