CONCUBINAGE (Lat. concubinatus): A legal and durable union between two persons of opposite sex, differing from marriage in that it did not include the affectio maritalis. It resembled marriage de facto, but not de jure, as the woman was not the man's coequal companion for life. It could be entered into only with a freed woman or freeborn woman of the lowest class; whereas a honesta femina could become a concubine only by the process of express testatio, without which the union came under the head of stwprum. Not until the ninth century was concubinage prohibited in the Eastern Empire, by Emperor Leo VI. (cf. P. Meyer, Der romische Koncubinat nach den Rechtsquellen und den Inschriften, Leipsic, 1895). The Germanic peoples also admitted, collaterally with marriage, a valid union of distinguished men with free women of inferior estate, or even with bondwomen.
Down to the fifth century the state of concubinage was not contested on the side of the Church. Since that time, however, the Church has disallowed concubinage, having qualified marriage as the sole morally justified sexual union, although not forbidding concubinage altogether. Accordingly it persisted, especially in the Roman and tlie Germanic empires, and even the national council of Mainz in 851 merely repeated certain moderate restrictions of the fifth century. Though concubinage was interdicted in the case of certain of the clergy, ecclesiastical legislation down to the sixteenth century conveyed no threat of actual penalties against the practise on the part of laymen. In the Evangelical Church the moral opprobrium of concubinage has never been doubtful; so little, indeed, that it is liable to church discipline.
Concubinage is not recognized by the civil law, being rather treated as other extramarital sexual intercourse, and in particular as touching the claims of concubines on account of illicit pregnancy, and
RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Concordats and Delimiting Concursus Divinus [Bulls
the rights of a concubine's children to support and inheritance against him who maintained her.
For concubinage among the Hebrews see Family AND Marriage Relations, Hebrew.
E. Sehling.
Bibliography: G. E. Howard, Hist, of Matrimonial Institutions, 3 vols., Chicago, 1904; H. Klee, Die Ehe, eine dogmatisch-archaologische Abhandlung, Mainz, 1833; J. J. I. Dollinger, Hippolytus and Callistus, pp. 147 sqq., Edinburgh, 1876; H. C. Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, chap, xii.. New York, 1907; Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, v. 380 et passim.
CONCURSUS DIVINUS : The divine activity in its relation to the agency of finite creatures and potencies, or in its relation to the development of the world in so far as this is conditioned by finite " efficient causes." This relation to cosmic evolution through " final causes " is termed " governance." Both concursus and " gov- Biblical ernance " accordingly involve the and problem of the relation of the divine Scholastic activity to the free will of man. In Doctrines, the Bible both concepts are represented.
The earth brings forth verdure, and man and animals multiply (Gen. i. 11 sqq.), while " thine hands have made me and fashioned me altogether round about " (Job x. 8); so that, on the one hand, man acts from the impulses of his own heart, and, on the other, in God alone "we live, and move, and have our being " (Acts xvii. 28). The relation of the two theses involves not only dogmatics, but also philosophy. The chief hypotheses on the concursus divinus were developed by the schoolmen, and the view current in Roman Catholic and early Protestant dogmatics was best elaborated by Thomas Aquinas. He teaches {Summa, i., quxstio 105): "God works in every work," not only as the end of all and as prime mover and preserver of the forms and powers of all things, but also because " he directs the forms and powers of all things to act"; no creature can " proceed in action unless it is moved by God " (quastio 109). This view was opposed by Durand of St. Pour9ain (q.v.), who contended that God need not cooperate immediately in that which takes place through finite or intermediate causes, but only mediately; and a third opinion was advanced by Gabriel Biel (q.v.) that creatures themselves do not act, that God himself is the sole factor, though his operations are conditioned by the existence of creatures. The Thomistic conception is also expressed in the Roman catechism, and has become the prevailing view in the Roman Catholic Church.
Among the Reformers the conviction that only God's pure, free grace can save from the misery of sin was combined from the very beginning with the deepest sense of the universal dependence of the creatures on their creator, and on Protestant the most vital relation of their creator Doctrine, to them. This consciousness shows itself in the works of the old Lutheran dogmaticians. J. Gerhard (Loci, VII. vii.-viii.) did not advance to the stage of a general definition of the concursus, since he treated only of the relation of God to the evil acts of the creatures. After him sharply defined metaphysical utterances on this subject are found in A. Calovius (Sysiema
locorum theologicorum, iii., De providentia, ii.), A. Quenstedt {Theologia didactico-polemica, xiii.), D. Hollaz (Examen theologicum, I. vi. 14, 16 sqq.), and others who followed Thomas in theory. Whereas Gerhard stated merely that God preserves unto his creatures the power of actual and free activity and assists them in their work, his successors argued that God influences the individual act and activity of the creature so that the act is the work both of God and of the creature, thus postulating a teaching midway between Durand and Biel. Unlike the doctrines of Thomas Aquinas, however, the divine act is regarded by these theologians as excluding an " initial motion " of the creature, and as merely cooperating with the creature. In the main, Lutheran dogmaticians agree with the theories of Roman Cathohcs. The specifically Protestant doctrine commences only with the question of the limitation of the human will, especially by original sin rather than by the cooperation of God. On account of this limitation an anticipatory as well as a cooperative activity on the part of God becomes necessary to raise man from his sin, and this divine agency is found in the activity of the Holy Spirit. Man being thus morally transformed, a " cooperation " of grace commences, which must be distinguished from the general cooperation of God with the natural agencies. In Reformed dogmatics the concursus is treated by some as a special part beside the " conservation " (the divine activity considered as a first cause) and governance; by others it is subsumed with the rest (cf. H. L. J. Heppe, Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformirten Kirche, Gotha, 1861, p. 190). Here the concursus is regarded not merely as simultaneous, but as anticipatory (J. H. Heidegger, Medulla theologice Christiance, Zurich, 1697, loc. vii. 14), and it is also taught that God works according to the individuality of the creatures. It is likewise held both in the Protestant and the Roman Catholic doctrine that God, who in such orderly manner cooperates with the natural agencies, has nevertheless the power to stop their activity or to work without them, or, in other words, can do miracles. Thus God, by whose concursus the fire burns, can withdraw his concursus and the fire burns no more, as in the case of the three men in the fiery furnace.
The question has been treated by such moderns as A. D. G. Twesten, F. A Phihppi, K. F. A. Kahnis, J. Miiller, F. A. B. Nitzsch, and R. A. Lipsius. The problem belongs to philosophy, rather than to dogmatics. Divine control of events and things is inconceivable without the assumption that God works in them; his activity can not be referred to an initial point, as if he directed them then, but were now inactive, and it is equally impossible to declare his activity to be merely preservative in character, for in contradistinction to a truly effective activity it would then appear as something negative or not admitting of destruction. On the other hand, the ethico-religious consciousness itself concedes to the world a real existence, just as man is conscious of existing in it as a relatively independent creature, with a sphere and material for his work, and just as the word is perceived to be a true revelation of God and a practical proof of divine love. For these
Condor Confesfiion