Marriage 101Sexual Intercourse = Marriage

My Sunday School did not offer a course in marriage. Neither did my high school nor my college. What I did know about marriage came from watching my parents, which was a healthy tutelage, from television, which was somewhat farcical, and from conversations with my peers, who were as ill-informed as I was. In general, ignorance tutored ignorance. I have to confess that when the time came that I was considering marriage, I was well supplied with misinformation and misconceptions.

My parents provided the positive influence. Dedicated to one another, hard working and devoted to team effort, they exemplified a pair bond. As to how that came about, we had the story that Dad had visited the Cipkar farm on a trip with his father, had met Mom, they had corresponded, he proposed, Grandpa said she couldn’t get married until after the crops were in and that Dad couldn’t return her after they married. So they got married and lived happily ever after. Siblings occurred, but strangely enough, the idea of my parents engaging in sex never really consciously entered my mind. Easy as that.

Television provided a second input. Marriage on television was displayed in half-hour segments, generally in a comedic setting. It was relatively sterile. There were occasional fights and reconciliations, children might be born, but again, while there were hints that perhaps something might be happening after the lights went out, TV in the 50’s and 60’s was generally very careful to avoid being educational in that respect. Sex was hinted at but not discussed directly; there was something seemingly unhealthy about it.

The influence of my peers was even less positive. We knew there was something mysterious about female physiology that was so forbidden that quite naturally we sought out all the information we could gather from whatever sources came to hand. The father of my best friend had a stash of girly magazines (which were off-limits to him, but he somehow was able to access them) and our sex education course was built largely around those. In secret we discussed the differences between “them” and “us”. The stories accompanying the pictures provided a basis for understanding that men wanted sex, women avoided sex, and when sex occurred, women participated because they either had to, or because they were immoral in some way.

The above is undoubtedly shocking to hear in the early 21st Century, but for many of my peers, the situation was very similar. As I neared the end of my high school years and entered college, the “knowledge” that I had about sexuality and what marital relations should be was discordant. Too many of the concepts conflicted, but there was still no way to resolve the discord. I understood that sex was acceptable within marriage, but if it occurred outside of marriage, there was a stigma, especially for girls.

As badly warped as my view of the physical aspect of marriage was, in retrospect, my concept of the social interactions that were part of the courtship ritual were just as flawed. Television and the occasional movie had presented courtship and marriage as the interaction between two people, totally outside the fabric of the greater family. Somewhere in the mix was the idea that a man would interact with his future wife’s parents, at least once or twice before the actual marriage ceremony. His family and her family had almost nothing to do with the relationship, or so the cinematic revelation went. Granted, way down deep this created some cognitive discord, but wasn’t the medium a reflection of reality? So it was perceived.

Dating in some ways reinforced those concepts. The girls parents had to be acknowledged and placated, but they were necessary obstacles to winning a girl’s heart. The important thing was the formula that would work out as boy + girl + love = marriage.

With that baggage I was encountered by Jesus and He changed the course of my life. It would be wonderful to say that somehow he magically wiped away all my prior miseducation and filled me with perfect understanding of how human relationships should be handled, but that did not happen. I was to be re-educated one step at a time, most likely so that I could end up writing this.

As a new convert, I realized the truth of God’s statement, “It is not good for man to be alone.” I also realized that the criteria that I had set for a marriage partner before my conversion were not suitable for a godly marriage. I did not want to enter a marriage that would be destined to fail.

The first bit of wisdom that was imparted to me was that the woman who was to be my wife must love God more than she loved me. In my unconverted state, that would have been unthinkable, but I now understood that if my wife were to love God in that fashion, she would never stop loving me. I began to examine the young ladies who were “available”, and soon came to realize that most of them had been educated in somewhat the same fashion I had previously been. In talking with them it was evident that they would prefer that I would woo them after the fashion of the world, playing to their needs.

Would I flatter them and make them feel important? Could I provide a good living for them? Did I have the proper social graces that they would not be embarrassed by my actions? Did I have potential for social advancement so that I could take them up with me? There were times when I wondered if I were being measured and evaluated based on the criteria that I had now been taught to reject.

I had gotten to know Violet at church camp as another new convert. She was serious — it was refreshing to meet a girl who did not seem to have husband-hunting in the back of her mind. Over the course of a year I realized that here was a young woman who did want God to have first place in her life, and whose compassion for others was such that she would humble herself to make sure that others were cared for. I grew to love her for that.

The fact that she was extremely attractive physically was not lost on me, and over the years I would need to learn to reconcile our sexuality with what I read in the Bible. That reconciliation would lead me to conclusions about the marital relationship which are not normative in current mainstream Christian thinking. It has also lead me to reevaluate the entire concept of marriage from the perspective of both the Tanach and the New Testament.

This is critical to theological well-being, since the Tanach repeatedly refers or implies to Israel as the “bride” of God, and the New Testament copies the thought with the drawing in of Gentile believers to be included in the “bride”. A number of evangelical theological concepts are intertwined with that. Current orthodox rabbinical Judaism parallels evangelical thought in many respects, and both have been heavily influenced by sources and thinking outside the written Word of God.

A unified and sound Biblical approach to the subject of marriage has several prerequisites. First is an unwavering faith that God Himself is righteous and good, and that all things He has decreed are also good, whether they are understandable by His people or not.

Secondly is an acceptance of the Bible, and especially the written Torah, as the Word of God. If that is the case, then whether what it says is humanly comfortable or not has no bearing on the universal validity of what is written there. The thinking of sages and the practices of cultures all fall outside the legitimacy of practice if they are in discord with God’s written Word.

With that we will begin the examination of marriage. In the realm of physical human existence, there is no escaping the fact that the only definition of marriage in the Bible is sexual intercourse. The reader is introduced to marriage in the second chapter of Genesis. “The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” [Gen. 2:23-25, NASV]

The first marriage in history had no ceremony, no formulas, no rituals, no promises or covenants. Those were all added later, by the practices of men, and not by God. For those who want to really be uncomfortable, there was no consent given by Eve, either (although she had no other choices, herself). Throughout the Bible, there is no ceremony prescribed, even when customs are described. In the evangelical arena, it is interesting to read the treatise of S. H. Froelich, Matrimony According to the Word of God.

From the perspective of orthodox Judaism, the Mechon Mamre website article Marriage states,

“The Torah provides very little guidance with regard to the procedures of a marriage. The method of finding a spouse, the form of the wedding ceremony, and the nature of the marital relationship are all explained in the Talmud. (Mishnah) Kiddushin 1,1 specifies that a woman is acquired (i.e., to be a wife) in three ways: through money, a contract, and sexual intercourse. Ordinarily, all three of these conditions are satisfied, although only one is necessary to effect a binding marriage.”

Because the institution of marriage can be entered into in such a simple way, in former times the concepts of chastity and virginity were considered extremely important. Outside of strict religious practice, promiscuity was largely treated with a double standard; men could be promiscuous without incurring extreme social censure, but women who were promiscuous suffered various forms of punishment. Numerous social safeguards were nevertheless erected to protect women, but most of those were overthrown in the aftermath of the mid-20th century “sexual revolution”.

It will be important to remember, however, as the subject is explored, that under the Bible’s definition of marriage, a person has as many spouses as he/she has had sexual intercourse with. This is clear from a careful analysis of written Torah, as well as the teachings of Jesus and his apostles. No other definition has Scriptural validity, and deliberate ignorance of the fact has lead to conclusions that have caused numerous people to live in sin.