UNPUBLISHED BOOK: GOOD ORDER IN THE CHURCH

Leslie McFall

4.6 PAUL WAS ANTI-FEMININE. HIS VIEW ON MARRIAGE WAS ECCENTRIC. HE ADVISED AGAINST MARRIAGE FOR "ALL MEN"

The impression that Paul was against marriage is still held against him because of his teaching on marriage in 1 Corinthians 7. Because of this he has been regarded as a male chauvinist. But justice, I feel, has not been done to this chapter or to Paul's view on marriage elsewhere in his epistles.

If we look closely at the situation in Corinth to which this chapter was addressed everything in the chapter fits together and should not be lifted out of its context and background.

The situation Paul is writing to is one where a wave of sex-mania had engulfed the city of Corinth (7:2, "since there is so much immorality"; 7:26, "because of the present crisis"). In ancient literature the verb korinqia&zomai "to Corinthise" is found occasionally with the meaning "to practice fornication." Paul's pastoral concern is that the church should not be swept off its feet, or in any way be influenced by this wave of permissiveness. The church must stand firm in the midst of this immorality. With the emphasis on not being swayed by the eroticism of the city, nor allowing its evil influence to penetrate into their lives, he asked the whole church to carry out Christ's directive: "Stay as you are" (7:17, 20, 24) which was given in a previous letter (now lost). In its present context this means: "Let everyone stay as he or she is for the time being. Concentrate on remaining uninfluenced by your environment. It is good that no one be married during the present distress."

The context of 1 Corinthians 7 is a specific directive from the Lord Jesus, given to a specific local church situation, at a specific moment in time. Paul was placed in the role of answering the local church's questions regarding the application of this specific directive in different situations. The kinds of questions he was being asked were, "Did Jesus mean that my engagement is to be broken off?" (The directive arrived just as someone got engaged.) "Does He mean that I am to divorce my unchristian wife?" (Asked by someone not sure if Jesus meant by "not to touch a woman," referred to a specific class of woman, i.e., an unsanctified wife). "Should I go ahead and give away my daughter(s) in marriage or suspend the wedding arrangements?" (Asked by parents.) The directive came at a time which was seen to "freeze" all the normal developments and relationships that are in progress in any society at any one point in time. But the directive was intended to be local and temporary, to meet a specific situation of immorality in Corinth. Even though it was local and temporary it has principles and guidance that can be carefully lifted out and applied in the general course of the Church's life in all ages.

Given this background, Paul's chief concern, then, like Peter's, was to protect the flock from following the way of the city, "living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you" (1 Pet 4:3-4). Paul's advice was for their own good that they "may attend upon the Lord without distraction" (7:35 RV). Here, then, is a man who has a truly deep, pastoral concern for the welfare of his brothers (4:14-15), and gives them the very best advice he can in order to see them through the "present crisis."

Paul's apostolic interpretative-application of the Lord's directive is addressed to six groups of people in the church. (1) Married Christian couples; (2) unmarried Christian men and women; (3) mixed-marriages where the unbeliever wants to stay; (4) mixed-marriages where the unbeliever wants to leave; (5) Christian fathers concerned about their virgin daughters; and (6) Christian fathers/fiancés concerned about betrothed virgin daughters. To each of these groups Christ's word to the church is: "Stay as you are for the time being." This directive from the Lord Jesus was probably not meant to be taken in an absolute sense even during the present period, as Paul's advice makes clear.

Paul then goes through each of these groups making adjustments in the light of their circumstances. In these concessions he is interpreting the mind of Christ without ever undermining the directive itself. In these concessions Paul shows a remarkable understanding of human sexual behaviour and psychology. He knows (through the Spirit) exactly how to modify the directive to meet the peculiar needs of each group.

Concerning those in group 1 (7:2-7) he meets the possible (maybe actual) misinterpretation (of the original directive which was contained in his previous letter) that they are to abstain from sexual relations completely. He replies that he did not mean that at all. He meant that their sexual relations should continue normally without ever wanting to "touch" each other as a result of being aroused by the eroticism of the city. He wished that they could resist being aroused by this extra-marital stimuli as he (Paul) would certainly resist it if he were in Corinth. He wishes they could remain "normal" as he would in such a situation. That is what he means when he says in 7:7, "I wish that all men were as I am [in this matter of resisting the urge to have sexual relations as a result of being aroused by the eroticism of their environment]."

Why should sexual relations between Christian couples be influenced and regulated by their evil environment? They shouldn't be. Nevertheless, Paul, realising that married couples are not in the habit of exercising abstinence with regard to their sexual feelings wisely suggests, and here is the concession, that because of the real temptation to sin, "because of your lack of self-control" (7:5), they should not deprive each other of this "way of escape" (10:13) unless it be by mutual consent, and for a limited time. This was surely the wisest advice to give married couples in such exceptional evil times.

It would have been a pointless, thoughtless, and a hurtful remark had Paul told the married men that he wished they were unmarried. That would have been to belittle their charisma and exalt his own unmarried status. This would have been completely out of character with Paul's own policy not to offend anyone (10:32-33). He did not wish that they did not have their charisma, but rather, that in the present distress they could exercise sufficient self-control over their charisma that they would not be led into temptation under the abnormally high external stimuli to do so, just as he (Paul) would raise the level of his self-control to meet the same situation. The concession was made to the lack of self-control over the charisma, and not to the charisma itself.

To those in group 2 (7:8-9, those who are presently unmarried), both men and women who could contract their own marriages, he interprets the directive: "Stay as you are," to mean, "Do not get married under present conditions." Paul realised that the "normal" conditions under which men and women marry were suspended due to the immoral climate, hence there was the real danger that young men in particular might be carried away by their passions to seek a wife when they might never have got married under "normal" circumstances. The real danger here was that after the wave of eroticism had passed these persons would be left high and dry and be unable to satisfy their partners without the external stimuli of their promiscuous environment.

Once again, Paul shows an instinctive awareness of the psychology of sexual compatibility. The directive, then, was good and extremely timely. It was designed to shield his unmarried brothers and sisters in Christ from the dangers latent in their situation.

On the other hand, Paul may just be reinforcing Jesus' instructions to his people in Corinth, that for the sake of the Gospel no one should get married at this time. The local church was to give its entire resources to spreading the Gospel of His love for the city and its environs. Marriage divides one's interests. The husband and wife must please each other and this means less attention to the Lord, "their interests are divided" (7:33-34c). The unmarried are in a better position to please the Lord and look after His interests (7:32-34b). "The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord . . . . And the unmarried women and virgins are anxious about the affairs of the Lord, so that they may be holy in body and spirit . . . . I say this . . . to promote unhindered devotion to the Lord" (7:32-37).

Because the proclamation of the Gospel was in its infancy Jesus may have desired that everyone put that work first to the exclusion of all other pursuits. Marriage would clearly divide the interests of His people and divert their energies from preaching the Gospel to the world in their own generation, for the impression Jesus left His church with was that He was coming back very soon. Marriage is not the most important thing in anyone's life, rather it is doing the will of Jesus to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every person.

To those in group 3 (7:12-14) who had an unbelieving marriage partner there was the possibility that the Christian husband may have understood Jesus' directive, "It is good for a man not to touch a woman," to mean, "not to touch an unholy woman," that is, an unbelieving woman. If so, were they to separate? Paul meets this situation by prefacing his own remarks with those of the Lord on the subject of divorce and separation (7:10-11). They are one flesh, therefore if the unbelieving partner wants the marriage union to continue it should continue: there is no theological reason to separate from an unbelieving partner in this instance.

Obviously the unbelieving partner would have no real defence against the permissive society, which makes it all the more important that the directive given in 7:2-4 (but not v. 5) be followed in this instance.

To those in group 4 (7:15-18) where the unbelieving partner wants to end the marriage, they were allowed to do so. The Christian partner in such a situation is to accept this as his/her calling. They are now to "remain in the condition which he was in when God called him" (7:20). Paul then uses this opportunity to expand a little on the universal directive ("This is the rule I lay down in all the churches") that everyone should remain in the calling "that the Lord assigned to him and to which God called him" (7:17).

Note that the "calling" is the one experienced at the exact moment when one became a Christian. If a man was unmarried he was to stay unmarried (unless he burned with desire, in which case the general rule to remain in the state God called you in is overridden by the gift [charisma] of marriage). If a man was a slave he was to stay a slave (unless he could legitimately become free). If he became free this was not to do as he pleased but to become Christ's slave. If he was born a Jew and became a Christian, he can remain a Jew and follow Jewish customs so long as these did not contradict the life of Christ within him, who regarded all Jewish ceremonial laws and customs as unnecessary to salvation. If an unmarried girl became a Christian she should remain unmarried and "be holy in body and spirit" (7:34). If a man was a soldier when he became a Christian he was not to leave the army. Jesus wanted to reach men and women in all walks of life and in all professions so that He commanded them to stay in the calling in which He called them and witness to Him there. In this way He could reach into every nook and cranny where people were and present them with His claims on their lives.

To those in group 5 (7:25-35), the fathers who have the responsibility of providing husbands for their virgin daughters, he says he has no direct command from the Lord. But indirectly he can tell them what the mind of the Lord is. He reasons thus: Your virgins should be married only to Christian men in the church. The men have been commanded not to marry during the present distress/crisis. Some of them may have to marry because of their charisma (7:9). If they desire to marry your daughter then do not place any unnecessary obstacles in the way of such marriage. In short Paul was saying: It all depends on the men.

To those in group 6 (7:36-38), to the fathers whose virgin daughters have been engaged to be married before the directive was made known to the church, Paul asks that the wedding be postponed for the time being. However, the decision to make the postponement lies not with the father ("he that gives in marriage"), but with the fiancé, and this was surely the correct advice. "If she is getting on in years and he feels he ought to marry," then they should get married (7:36). They are not reckoned as having gone against the temporary prohibition on marriage, "he is not sinning." However, if the fiancé puts off his marriage in order to keep Christ's command "he does better."

Verse 38 is addressed to the fiancée's father assuring him that he is not sinning in allowing the marriage to go ahead.

Section summary

So often chapter 7 is taken as the "normal" situation. If so, it puts Paul in a bad light. Closer examination, however, has shown that this was an abnormal situation. And even closer examination of the text and context shows that the temporary ban on marriage came, not from Paul but, from the Lord. It was a sin to have ignored it (7:28, 36). In this chapter, then, we can observe the direct intervention of the Head of the Church in the care and protection of his flock. The danger of being led astray into sexual immorality seems to have been a common one for the churches of those times. We read of a similar situation in the church in Thyatira (Rev 2:20-24). "Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel . . . . By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality . . . . I have given her time to repent of her immorality . . . . I will cast her on a bed of suffering . . . . I will strike . . . . Then all the churches will know that I am he." Thus it would appear that He who "walks among the seven golden candlesticks" exercised a more direct supervision of the lives of church members in the first century than we can observe in the twenty-first century. Perhaps dozens of temporary situations were covered by directives or "commands of the Lord" in a similar fashion to 1 Corinthians 7 but these have not been preserved by the Holy Spirit for our learning.

Only by taking certain statements in chapter 7 out of context is it possible to hold that Paul was "against marriage," or, "against women." As for his being anti-feminine, he did not appear to find it difficult to adjust to the company of women if we are to go by the large number of women he greets in his epistles, see Romans 16 and Philippians 4:3 in particular.

As Bruce Waltke rightly pointed out marriage is the normative state if we are to take Genesis 2 as normative. Here, in a perfect, sinless world, God observed Adam, and declared that it was "not good" for him to be alone. The whole of the Old Testament presents marriage as a holy and an ideal state. Though marriage was not a set requirement for holiness, it is instructive that the norm for all the priests and highpriests, that is, for the most holy persons standing between the people of Israel and their God, were married men. The High Priest, in particular, was expected to marry a virgin from his own tribe. Neither he, nor the priests, could marry a divorcee (Lev 21:7, 13-15). Priests were born priests, i.e., holy persons, but Nazirites were the most holy persons in the Old Testament by their own choice. They were married persons (male and female). He shares with the High Priest (unlike the priests) the unique distinction that while in the period of his Nazirite vow he could not make himself ceremonially unclean, not even for his father or mother (Num 6:7; cf. Lev 21:11). While in his/her state of "separation" to the Lord, they are to abstain from many things but they never fasted sexually. Celibacy was never imposed on any person in the Old Testament. "Marriage was part of their consecration, worship, and holiness" (Waltke).

Paul, as noted, elevates singleness for "gifted" individuals to an even greater state (1 Cor 7). In regard to women who are called to singleness, however, his design is not to favour women's careers outside the home over motherhood within it, but, in addition to minimizing the dangers of an "impending crisis" (v. 26), to enable them to be fully devoted to Christ without distraction (vv. 32-35). Apart from this "giftedness," the apostle teaches as normative behaviour that older women teach younger women "to love their husbands and be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God" (Titus 2:4-5).

The normative behaviour of the older women is sadly neglected today. They are a redundant lot; cast aside or ignored by their "know better" daughters, so that a life-long accumulation of wisdom is left largely untapped by the next generation, who are left to "learn by their mistakes" what their mothers and grandmothers could have told them to watch and so avoided repeating the errors of the past. In any return to a biblical culture, greater influence and status must be accorded to the wisdom of the older generation of both men and women, so that we can build on the best of the past and learn what to avoid for our good from the "mistakes of the past."

Male Christian leaders will often promote young, good-looking women over the heads of older, more mature women, to stand at the front in public meetings or even to preach. Mature women ought to be presented as the role models for younger women to follow if we are to imitate Paul who prized their experience and teaching skills in his pastoral work.

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