Chapter 11 [X.]--The Sacrament of Marriage; Marriage Indissoluble; The World's Law About Divorce Different from the Gospel's.
It is certainly not fecundity only, the fruit of which consists of offspring, nor chastity only, whose bond is fidelity, but also a certain sacramental bond [2089] in marriage which is recommended to believers in wedlock. Accordingly it is enjoined by the apostle: "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church." [2090] Of this bond the substance [2091] undoubtedly is this, that the man and the woman who are joined together in matrimony should remain inseparable as long as they live; and that it should be unlawful for one consort to be parted from the other, except for the cause of fornication. [2092] For this is preserved in the case of Christ and the Church; so that, as a living one with a living one, there is no divorce, no separation for ever. And so complete is the observance of this bond in the city of our God, in His holy mountain [2093] --that is to say, in the Church of Christ--by all married believers, who are undoubtedly members of Christ, that, although women marry, and men take wives, for the purpose of procreating children, it is never permitted one to put away even an unfruitful wife for the sake of having another to bear children. And whosoever does this is held to be guilty of adultery by the law of the gospel; though not by this world's rule, which allows a divorce between the parties, without even the allegation of guilt, and the contraction of other nuptial engagements,--a concession which, the Lord tells us, even the holy Moses extended to the people of Israel, because of the hardness of their hearts. [2094] The same condemnation applies to the woman, if she is married to another man. So enduring, indeed, are the rights of marriage between those who have contracted them, as long as they both live, that even they are looked on as man and wife still, who have separated from one another, rather than they between whom a new connection has been formed. For by this new connection they would not be guilty of adultery, if the previous matrimonial relation did not still continue. If the husband die, with whom a true marriage was made, a true marriage is now possible by a connection which would before have been adultery. Thus between the conjugal pair, as long as they live, the nuptial bond has a permanent obligation, and can be cancelled neither by separation nor by union with another. But this permanence avails, in such cases, only for injury from the sin, not for a bond of the covenant. In like manner the soul of an apostate, which renounces as it were its marriage union with Christ, does not, even though it has cast its faith away, lose the sacrament of its faith, which it received in the laver of regeneration. It would undoubtedly be given back to him if he were to return, although he lost it on his departure from Christ. He retains, however, the sacrament after his apostasy, to the aggravation of his punishment, not for meriting the reward.
[2089] Quoddam sacramentum. See above, On Original Sin, ch. 39 [xxxiv].
[2090] Eph. v. 25.
[2091] Res sacramenti.
[2092] Matt. v. 32.
[2093] Ps. xlviii. 2.
[2094] Matt. xix. 8.
Chapter 12 [XI.]--Marriage Does Not Cancel a Mutual Vow of Continence; There Was True Wedlock Between Mary and Joseph; In What Way Joseph Was the Father of Christ.
But God forbid that the nuptial bond should be regarded as broken between those who have by mutual consent agreed to observe a perpetual abstinence from the use of carnal concupiscence. Nay, it will be only a firmer one, whereby they have exchanged pledges together, which will have to be kept by an especial endearment and concord,--not by the voluptuous links of bodies, but by the voluntary affections of souls. For it was not deceitfully that the angel said to Joseph: "Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife." [2095] She is called his wife because of her first troth of betrothal, although he had had no carnal knowledge of her, nor was destined to have. The designation of wife was neither destroyed nor made untrue, where there never had been, nor was meant to be, any carnal connection. That virgin wife was rather a holier and more wonderful joy to her husband because of her very pregnancy without man, with disparity as to the child that was born, without disparity in the faith they cherished. And because of this conjugal fidelity they are both deservedly called "parents" [2096] of Christ (not only she as His mother, but he as His father, as being her husband), both having been such in mind and purpose, though not in the flesh. But while the one was His father in purpose only, and the other His mother in the flesh also, they were both of them, for all that, only the parents of His humility, not of His sublimity; of His weakness, not of His divinity. For the Gospel does not lie, in which one reads, "Both His father and His mother marvelled at those things which were spoken about Him;" [2097] and in another passage, "Now His parents went to Jerusalem every year;" [2098] and again a little afterwards, "His mother said unto Him, Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us? Behold, Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing." [2099] In order, however, that He might show them that He had a Father besides them, who begat Him without a mother, He said to them in answer: "How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" [2100] Furthermore, lest He should be thought to have repudiated them as His parents by what He had just said, the evangelist at once added: "And they understood not the saying which He spake unto them; and He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them." [2101] Subject to whom but His parents? And who was the subject but Jesus Christ, "who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God"? [2102] And wherefore subject to them, who were far beneath the form of God, except that "He emptied Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant," [2103] --the form in which His parents lived? Now, since she bore Him without his engendering, they could not surely have both been His parents, of that form of a servant, if they had not been conjugally united, though without carnal connection. Accordingly the genealogical series (although both parents of Christ are mentioned together in the succession) [2104] had to be extended, as it is in fact, [2105] down rather to Joseph's name, that no wrong might be done, in the case of this marriage, to the male, and indeed the stronger sex, while at the same time there was nothing detrimental to truth, since Joseph, no less than Mary, was of the seed of David, [2106] of whom it was foretold that Christ should come.
[2095] Matt. i. 20.
[2096] Luke ii. 41.
[2097] Luke ii. 33. So the Vulgate as well as the best Greek texts, instead of the "And Joseph and His mother marvelled," etc., of the common text.
[2098] Luke ii. 41.
[2099] Luke ii. 48.
[2100] Luke ii. 49.
[2101] Luke ii. 50, 51.
[2102] Phil. ii. 6.
[2103] Phil. ii. 7.
[2104] Matt. i. 16.
[2105] Compare Luke iii. 23 with Matt. i. 16.
[2106] Luke i. 27.