Article: Early Church left the regulation of marriage to the state

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Is this article accurate?
The early church had no specific rite for marriage. This was left up to the secular authorities of the Roman Empire, since marriage is a legal concern for the legitimacy of heirs. When the Empire became Christian under Constantine, Christian emperors continued the imperial control of marriage, as the Code of Justinian makes clear. When the Empire faltered in the West, church courts took up the role of legal adjudicator of valid marriages. But there was still no special religious meaning to the institution. As the best scholar of sacramental history, Joseph Martos, puts it: **“Before the eleventh century there was no such thing as a Christian wedding ceremony in the Latin church, and throughout the Middle Ages there was no single church ritual for solemnizing marriage between Christians.” **
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nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/may/09/marriage-myth/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nyrblog+%28NYRblog%29
 
I’m unsure about this, but there was clearly Jewish wedding ceremonies well before this. Jesus attended one and changed water into wine.

While I support the rights of all people to “marry” and aquire the rights and responsibilities given in marriage, this looks like an attempt by the gay rights folks to re-write history to justify gay marriage. They should just look at the US Constitution which gives them the right (14th amendment) and not try to re-write history.

Of course, as always, i could be wrong…

God bless
 
I think it’s good to be skeptical of finding accurate Church history info on a blog.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that it is true. So what? Marriage predates Christianity and exists validly outside of Christianity. If the litrugical rites took time to develop, that does not change what marriage is nor the Church’s credibility in speaking the truth about what marraige is.
 
The Church never left the regulation of the marriage to the civil authority, only the formality of the wedding was left to the civil authority, that is a substantial difference. The Church always had its laws concerning marriage.
Today in a lot of countries (e.g. across Europe) the Church does not allow the celebration of the rite of marriage unless the couple is already married according to the government.
 
“Early Church left the regulation of marriage to the state.” Ergo, we should too? Why are unbelievers looking to the Church for validation?
The indispensable condition for our personal spiritual survival is that we say NO to the prevailing values of the liberal order and that we KEEP saying NO.
 
Birdpreacher said:
Is this article accurate?

nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/may/09/marriage-myth/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nyrblog+%28NYRblog%29
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Refutation of Garry Wills’ article:
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A sacrament is, at its most basic, a sign of spiritual things. There is no getting around the fact that marriage is a sacrament or mystery in some sense, since Ephesians 5 explicitly treats of it in those terms, and, contrary to Wills, calling marriage a sacrament goes back as far in Christian history as we can find explicit statements on the subject, not just to the eleventh century. Augustine, for instance, writing well before the eleventh century, explicitly discusses the sacramental character of marriage
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. The big dispute over marriage as a sacrament that later took place was not over whether marriage was a sacrament but over three things, the relation of marriage to holy virginity, the precise sort of sacrament it was, and the minister of the sacrament, and it indeed took a long time before general agreement took hold in the West that Scriptural principles and Church practice required that it be regarded as one of the seven – but that list was long in forming, as well – and that the ministers were the espousing couple rather than the priest. Marriage as a specific religious ritual was also long in forming, and mostly arose out of the attempt of the Church to reduce fraudulent or dangerous marriage practices; but it is an entirely distinct matter. It is utter nonsense, however, to claim that a lack of such a religious ritual means that “there was still no special religious meaning to the institution.” This is an obvious non sequitur, and manifestly false; you can easily see that a religious meaning is assigned to the institution in both Johannine writings (“the marriage feast of the Lamb”) and Pauline writings (“the body of Christ”), and no one can read, say, Tertullian’s writings on marriage and conclude that Christians of his day attributed “no special religious meaning to the institution.” Further, Wills seems to have difficulty grasping the notion that ‘no specific ritual’ or ‘no single ritual’ is not logically equivalent to ‘no associated rituals at all’.

It is perhaps worth pointing out that even today it is recognized that the distinctive religious ritual associated with Catholic marriage – the Nuptial Mass – is not strictly required for the sacrament, and the primary role of the priest is simply to act as a guide and to certify that the conditions have been met for a genuine sacramental marriage.

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branemrys.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/garry-wills-on-sacrament-of-marriage.html
 
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