On Monogamy.
After the ancient examples of the patriarchs, let us equally pass on to the ancient documents of the legal Scriptures, that we may treat in order of all our canon. And since there are some who sometimes assert that they have nothing to do with the law (which Christ has not dissolved, but fulfilled), sometimes catch at such parts of the law as they choose; plainly do we too assert that the law has deceased in this sense, that its burdens—according to the sentence of the apostles—which not even the fathers were able to sustain, have wholly ceased: such (parts), however, as relate to righteousness not only permanently remain reserved, but even amplified; in order, to be sure, that our righteousness may be able to redound above the righteousness of the scribes and of the Pharisees. If “righteousness” must, of course chastity must too. If, then, forasmuch as there is in the law a precept that a man is to take in marriage the wife of his brother if he have died without children, for the purpose of raising up seed to his brother; and this may happen repeatedly to the same person, according to that crafty question of the Sadducees; men for that reason think that frequency of marriage is permitted in other cases as well: it will be their duty to understand first the reason of the precept itself; and thus they will come to know that that reason, now ceasing, is among those parts of the law which have been cancelled. Necessary it was that there should be a succession to the marriage of a brother if he died childless: first, because that ancient benediction, “Grow and multiply,” had still to run its course; secondly, because the sins of the fathers used to be exacted even from the sons; thirdly, because eunuchs and barren persons used to be regarded as ignominious. And thus, for fear that such as had died childless, not from natural inability, but from being prematurely overtaken by death, should be judged equally accursed (with the other class); for this reason a vicarious and (so to say) posthumous offspring used to be supplied them. But (now), when the “extremity of the times” has cancelled (the command) “Grow and multiply,” since the apostles (another command), “It remaineth, that both they who have wives so be as if they have not,” because “the time is compressed;” and “the sour grape” chewed by “the fathers” has ceased “to set the sons’ teeth on edge,” for, “each one shall die in his own sin;” and “eunuchs” not only have lost ignominy, but have even deserved grace, being invited into “the kingdoms of the heavens:” the law of succeeding to the wife of a brother being buried, its contrary has obtained—that of not succeeding to the wife of a brother. And thus, as we have said before, what has ceased to be valid, on the cessation of its reason, cannot furnish a ground of argument to another. Therefore a wife, when her husband is dead, will not marry; for if she marry, she will of course be marrying (his) brother: for “all we are brethren.” Again, the woman, if intending to marry, has to marry “in the Lord;” that is, not to an heathen, but to a brother, inasmuch as even the ancient law forbids marriage with members of another tribe. Since, moreover, even in Leviticus there is a caution, “Whoever shall have taken (his) brother’s wife, (it) is uncleanness—turpitude; without children shall (he) die;” beyond doubt, while the man is prohibited from marrying a second time, the woman is prohibited too, having no one to marry except a brother. In what way, then, an agreement shall be established between the apostle and the Law (which he is not impugning in its entirety), shall be shown when we shall have come to his own epistle. Meantime, so far as pertains to the law, the lines of argument drawn from it are more suitable for us (than for our opponents). In short, the same (law) prohibits priests from marrying a second time. The daughter also of a priest it bids, if widowed or repudiated, if she have had no seed, to return into her father’s home and be nourished from his bread. The reason why (it is said), “If she have had no seed,” is not that if she have she may marry again—for how much more will she abstain from marrying if she have sons?—but that, if she have, she may be “nourished” by her son rather than by her father; in order that the son, too, may carry out the precept of God, “Honour father and mother.” Us, moreover, Jesus, the Father’s Highest and Great Priest, clothing us from His own store —inasmuch as they “who are baptized in Christ have put on Christ”—has made “priests to God His Father,” according to John. For the reason why He recalls that young man who was hastening to his father’s obsequies, is that He may show that we are called priests by Him; (priests) whom the Law used to forbid to be present at the sepulture of parents: “Over every dead soul,” it says, “the priest shall not enter, and over his own father and over his own mother he shall not be contaminated.” “Does it follow that we too are bound to observe this prohibition?” No, of course. For our one Father, God, lives, and our mother, the Church; and neither are we dead who live to God, nor do we bury our dead, inasmuch as they too are living in Christ. At all events, priests we are called by Christ; debtors to monogamy, in accordance with the pristine Law of God, which prophesied at that time of us in its own priests.
Chapter VIII.—From the Law Tertullian Comes to the Gospel. He Begins with Examples Before Proceeding to Dogmas.
Turning now to the law, which is properly ours—that is, to the Gospel—by what kind of examples are we met, until we come to definite dogmas? Behold, there immediately present themselves to us, on the threshold as it were, the two priestesses of Christian sanctity, Monogamy and Continence: one modest, in Zechariah the priest; one absolute, in John the forerunner: one appeasing God; one preaching Christ: one proclaiming a perfect priest; one exhibiting “more than a prophet,” —him, namely, who has not only preached or personally pointed out, but even baptized Christ. For who was more worthily to perform the initiatory rite on the body of the Lord, than flesh similar in kind to that which conceived and gave birth to that (body)? And indeed it was a virgin, about to marry once for all after her delivery, who gave birth to Christ, in order that each title of sanctity might be fulfilled in Christ’s parentage, by means of a mother who was both virgin, and wife of one husband. Again, when He is presented as an infant in the temple, who is it who receives Him into his hands? who is the first to recognise Him in spirit? A man “just and circumspect,” and of course no digamist, (which is plain) even (from this consideration), lest (otherwise) Christ should presently be more worthily preached by a woman, an aged widow, and “the wife of one man;” who, living devoted to the temple, was (already) giving in her own person a sufficient token what sort of persons ought to be the adherents to the spiritual temple,—that is, the Church. Such eye-witnesses the Lord in infancy found; no different ones had He in adult age. Peter alone do I find—through (the mention of) his “mother-in-law” ,—to have been married. Monogamist I am led to presume him by consideration of the Church, which, built upon him, was destined to appoint every grade of her Order from monogamists. The rest, while I do not find them married, I must of necessity understand to have been either eunuchs or continent. Nor indeed, if, among the Greeks, in accordance with the carelessness of custom, women and wives are classed under a common name—however, there is a name proper to wives —shall we therefore so interpret Paul as if he demonstrates the apostles to have had wives?
For if he were disputing about marriages, as he does in the sequel, where the apostle could better have named some particular example, it would appear right for him to say, “For have we not the power of leading about wives, like the other apostles and Cephas?” But when he subjoins those (expressions) which show his abstinence from (insisting on) the supply of maintenance, saying, “For have we not the power of eating and drinking?” he does not demonstrate that “wives” were led about by the apostles, whom even such as have not still have the power of eating and drinking; but simply “women,” who used to minister to them in the same way (as they did) when accompanying the Lord.
But further, if Christ reproves the scribes and Pharisees, sitting in the official chair of Moses, but not doing what they taught, what kind of (supposition) is it that He Himself withal should set upon His own official chair men who were mindful rather to enjoin—(but) not likewise to practise—sanctity of the flesh, which (sanctity) He had in all ways recommended to their teaching and practising?—first by His own example, then by all other arguments; while He tells (them) that “the kingdom of heavens” is “children’s;” while He associates with these (children) others who, after marriage, remained (or became) virgins; while He calls (them) to (copy) the simplicity of the dove, a bird not merely innocuous, but modest too, and whereof one male knows one female; while He denies the Samaritan woman’s (partner to be) a husband, that He may show that manifold husbandry is adultery; while, in the revelation of His own glory, He prefers, from among so many saints and prophets, to have with him Moses and Elias —the one a monogamist, the other a voluntary celibate (for Elias was nothing else than John, who came “in the power and spirit of Elias”); while that “man gluttonous and toping,” the “frequenter of luncheons and suppers, in the company of publicans and sinners,” sups once for all at a single marriage, though, of course, many were marrying (around Him); for He willed to attend (marriages) only so often as (He willed) them to be.
Chapter IX.—From Examples Tertullian Passes to Direct Dogmatic Teachings. He Begins with the Lord’s Teaching.
But grant that these argumentations may be thought to be forced and founded on conjectures, if no dogmatic teachings have stood parallel with them which the Lord uttered in treating of divorce, which, permitted formerly, He now prohibits, first because “from the beginning it was not so,” like plurality of marriage; secondly, because “What God hath conjoined, man shall not separate,” —for fear, namely, that he contravene the Lord: for He alone shall “separate” who has “conjoined” (separate, moreover, not through the harshness of divorce, which (harshness) He censures and restrains, but through the debt of death) if, indeed, “one of two sparrows falleth not on the ground without the Father’s will.” Therefore if those whom God has conjoined man shall not separate by divorce, it is equally congruous that those whom God has separated by death man is not to conjoin by marriage; the joining of the separation will be just as contrary to God’s will as would have been the separation of the conjunction.
So far as regards the non-destruction of the will of God, and the restruction of the law of “the beginning.” But another reason, too, conspires; nay, not another, but (one) which imposed the law of “the beginning,” and moved the will of God to prohibit divorce: the fact that (he) who shall have dismissed his wife, except on the ground of adultery, makes her commit adultery; and (he) who shall have married a (woman) dismissed by her husband, of course commits adultery. A divorced woman cannot even marry legitimately; and if she commit any such act without the name of marriage, does it not fall under the category of adultery, in that adultery is crime in the way of marriage? Such is God’s verdict, within straiter limits than men’s, that universally, whether through marriage or promiscuously, the admission of a second man (to intercourse) is pronounced adultery by Him. For let us see what marriage is in the eye of God; and thus we shall learn what adultery equally is. Marriage is (this): when God joins “two into one flesh;” or else, finding (them already) joined in the same flesh, has given His seal to the conjunction. Adultery is (this): when, the two having been—in whatsoever way— disjoined, other—nay, rather alien—flesh is mingled (with either): flesh concerning which it cannot be affirmed, “This is flesh out of my flesh, and this bone out of my bones.”
For this, once for all done and pronounced, as from the beginning, so now too, cannot apply to “other” flesh. Accordingly, it will be without cause that you will say that God wills not a divorced woman to be joined to another man “while her husband liveth,” as if He do will it “when he is dead;” whereas if she is not bound to him when dead, no more is she when living. “Alike when divorce dissevers marriage as when death does, she will not be bound to him by whom the binding medium has been broken off.” To whom, then, will she be bound? In the eye of God, it matters nought whether she marry during her life or after his death. For it is not against him that she sins, but against herself. “Any sin which a man may have committed is external to the body; but (he) who commits adultery sins against his own body.” But—as we have previously laid down above—whoever shall intermingle with himself “other” flesh, over and above that pristine flesh which God either conjoined into two or else found (already) conjoined, commits adultery. And the reason why He has abolished divorce, which “was not from the beginning,” is, that He may strengthen that which “was from the beginning”—the permanent conjunction, (namely), of “two into one flesh:” for fear that necessity or opportunity for a third union of flesh may make an irruption (into His dominion); permitting divorce to no cause but one—if, (that is), the (evil) against which precaution is taken chance to have occurred beforehand. So true, moreover, is it that divorce “was not from the beginning,” that among the Romans it is not till after the six hundredth year from the building of the city that this kind of “hard-heartedness” is set down as having been committed. But they indulge in promiscuous adulteries, even without divorcing (their partners): to us, even if we do divorce them, even marriage will not be lawful.