Marriage, Church, and State
Lessons from History
Over at Christianity Today is an article by David J. Ayers about the cohabitation dilemma with Christian couples in America increasingly cohabiting before marriage. Many Christian couples choose to cohabit before marriage for financial reasons and convenience even if some churches still frown upon it.
Of course, the idea of having a legally recognized marriage has not always been the norm for Christians. In the Greco-Roman world, marriages were often about business relationships and political alliances, nothing to do with romantic love, and therefore largely for the upper echelons of society. Marriage between social tiers was not impossible, but strongly discouraged, and legal marriages were not an option for slaves. Many people, while having a partner, did not necessarily have a legal marriage in the eyes of the Roman State.
In regards to laws about marriage in Augustan age:
A proper Roman marriage could not take place unless bride and groom were Roman citizens, or had been granted special permission, called “conubium.” At one point in Roman history, freed slaves had been forbidden to marry citizens. This restriction was relaxed by Emperor Augustus who passed a reform in 18 BC called the lex Julia so that, by the first century, freed slaves were only prohibited from marrying senators. Augustus insisted on other restrictions on marriage. Citizens were not allowed to marry prostitutes or actresses and provincial officials were not allowed to marry the local women. Soldiers were only allowed to marry in certain circumstances and marriages to close relatives were forbidden. Finally, unfaithful wives divorced by their husbands could not remarry (from PBS)
This problem of legal marriages and marriage prohibitions had an impact on the early church. In fact, Bishop Callistus of Rome (217-22 CE) had a particular problem. Many women from the Roman upper classes were Christians. However, there was a shortage of male Christians of the same social rank. So these women had a choice: either (a) marry a pagan man of the same social rank; or else (b) marry a socially inferior Christian.
However, if they married a pagan, then they would become unevenly yoked, which Paul warns against in 1 Cor 6:14, and wives would probably be forced to worship the husband’s household gods and accompany him to pagan festivals. But if the women married below their station (i.e., plebs, freedman, or slaves) then they would forfeit their social status. Hence the conundrum!
Callistus wanted to stop mixed marriages with pagans and prevent the social decline of Christian women. So Callistus allowed Christian women to marry slaves or freedmen in their household, in marriages recognized by the church but not by the state. All this meant in practice was that, in the eyes of the churches, the relationships were not considered adulterous or irregular and couples were morally obligated to each other as husband and wife as per the exhortations one finds in the New Testament. See Peter Lampe, Christians at Rome from Paul to Valentinus, 120-122.
In other words, a legal marriage and a church-sanctioned marriage are not necessarily the same thing - precisely why European marriages separate civil registration and religious ceremony. This might help out with the co-habitation dilemma!
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