Posted by Greg Jones at Covenant Communion:
April 07, 2009
Theologically understood, the essence of marriage is not natural but relational. The relationship is defined by the mutual embrace of each partner’s whole person. As such, the starting point for our thinking about Christian marriage is mutual love and faithfulness.
Human persons have dignity because they exist for their own sakes, as creatures of God in God’s own image. To be sure, an individual man or woman (whether married or not) is ‘fully’ human - there are no ‘partial persons.’ However, human fulfillment does cry out for the acceptance and affirmation of our personhood by others. Human fulfillment is developed in relationships of personal love, in which one says to another, “I want you to be; it is good that you are.” In Jesus’ teaching, the love of God and the love of neighbor speak to this.
People exist bodily and in relationship to creation. Our bodily and world-relational existence therefore is deeply marked by our sexuality - in terms of sexual identity and sexual expression. Human sexuality is fulfilled only within the context of personal bonds. Without these personal bonds, sexuality can result in the disintegration and loss of dignity of the human person.
The bodily nature of the human person further means that marriage cannot be purely personal or private. A minimum of physical, social and economic requirements are needed if a marriage is to be successful. As demonstrated in the law, the prophets, and the words of Jesus, ‘love includes justice’ - meaning that partners in marriage are called and required to give each other his or her due. Without this justice, love would be dishonest and empty. It is in this way that marriage requires both personal and public obligations.
The bond of faithfulness in marriage is not to be seen a yoke whereby individual liberties are restrained, but as a mantle under which mutual self-giving in the presence of God is celebrated.
In marriage, the partners commit themselves to an unconditional existence whose end is unseen. In this way, marital faithfulness is a form of Christian obedience in faith to God - whose love is likewise unconditional and whose ends are likewise unseen. As the ground of Christian marriage is the definitive and unconditional love of human beings by God, a marriage which holds this sort of love as its basis is a relationship in which divine transcendance may be experienced.
Adapted by Greg Jones from Walter Cardinal Kasper’s Theology of Christian Marriage.
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