1 Tim on marriage and childbirth

[NoelFitz]

I am trying to study 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, especially 1 Tim . I have written about the requirement for ministers to be married and mentioned childbirth. I want to take up related topics.

In 1 Tim one reads:

They forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth (NRSV, 1 Tim 4:3)

Thus we see that Paul considered here that both marriage and food should be received with thanks and that they are good.

We also see:

Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty (NRSV, 1 Tim 2:15).

Here we see that childbirth, rather than virginity/celibacy is held out as the ideal for women.

We also see in 1 Tim that:

So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, and manage their households, so as to give the adversary no occasion to revile us (NRSV, 1 Tim 5:14).

In later times the Church Fathers apparently disapproved of the remarriage of widows.

It is, perhaps, of interest to see how negative ideas about marriage and children developed in the Church.

 

[Todd_Easton]

St. Paul speaks of the virtues of Christian marriage in 1 Timothy but, from what he says in 1 Corinthians 7:7-9, he seems to prefer that, if they can, they should remain single, as he himself was:
7I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.
8To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. 9But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.

So, it would appear that, though they do well to marry, remaining single for the sake of the Kingdom of God is the ideal for Christians.

 

[NoelFitz]

Todd

I am delighted that you replied to me, as I appreciate your solid posts and at present I am trying to study St Paul, especially 1 Tim.

You refer to 1 Cor 7:7-9. This says Paul was unmarried when he wrote these verses, but it leaves open the possibility that he was a widower, since if he was a rabbi at one time he would have been married.

Paul claims it is well to be unmarried, but he does not put celibacy as higher than the married state explicitly here.

However one must admit that throughout its lifetime the Church has held celibacy superior to marriage.

Thus for example St Jerome wrote to Pammachius (Letter 48, par.21)

Why do we delude ourselves and feel vexed if while we are continually straining after sexual indulgence, we find the palm of chastity denied to us? We wish to fare sumptuously, and to enjoy the embraces of our wives, yet at the same time we desire to reign with Christ among virgins and widows. Shall there be but one reward, then, for hunger and for excess, for filth and for finery, for sackcloth and for silk?

Augustine in writing against Faustus (Ch 30, par 6) seems to sum up the Church’s constant teaching:

So, again, if your exhortations to virginity resembled the teaching of the apostle, “he who gives in marriage does well, and he who gives not in marriage does better;” if you taught that marriage is good, and virginity better, as the Church teaches which is truly Christ’s Church, you would not have been described in the Spirit’s prediction as forbidding to marry. What a man forbids he makes evil; but a good thing may be placed second to a better thing without being forbidden.