Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: hall@vice.ico.tek.com (Hal Lillywhite) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Unmarried priesthood etc. Message-ID: Date: 7 Jun 90 03:10:56 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR. Lines: 46 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article gilham@csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) writes: > I recall that St. Paul urged celibacy to ALL Christians, but even >he made a point of saying that it was merely a recommendation... a >piece of non-divine advice, if you will. > > "Should you marry, however, you will not be committing sin." > > (1 Corinthians 7:28) Well, I think there is a lot of misunderstanding about this chapter of 1 Corinthians, and I don't claim to know exactly what was being said. However, I think there are some things we should keep in mind about it and that in light of these things it does not appear that Paul was as anti-marriage as he at first appears. First the chapter starts with Paul saying, "Concerning the things you wrote to me..." Clearly he is responding to a question or comment from someone in Corinth. In other words, this chapter is Paul's answer to a question, but we do not have the question! Second, in verse 26 Paul says specifically that a man should not seek to change his marital status "for the present distress." Unfortunately we do not know what distress he referred to - persecution, illness, etc. To me this indicates that the suggestion to not marry applied only to a specific situation and was not intended to be a general rule. It may have even been this situation which lead to the letter from the Corinthians to which Paul was responding. Also, in verse 7 he expresses a wish that all men were as himself. Was Paul a lifelong bachelor? Probably not. I understand that he had probably been a member of the sanhedrin (although I can't give any specific documentation of that) which would have required that he be married. If so, Paul would have been either married or (more likely) widowed. Later in the same letter (1 Cor 11:11) Paul also says that in the Lord the man is not without the woman nor the woman without the man. This hardly seems consistent with any belief in lifelong general celibacy, and indeed seems to indicate that we should plan to marry when the time is right. In summary, I think 1 Cor 7 is not an injunction to avoid marriage in general, but a suggestion that in a particular situation marriage should be postponed until a more suitable time.