S1E18 – MC B3C6 – “Christian Marriage” (Part One)

Following on from last week’s episode on the virtue of chastity, today we look at the Christian teaching on marriage with C.S. Lewis. Matt and David got rather carried away on this chapter, recording far more material than normal, so this chapter will be divided into two parts.

S1E18: Mere Christianity: “Christian Marriage (Part One)” (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

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Toast

• The Drink-of-the-week today was sponsored by two listeners of the show, Rachel and Megan. They gave Matt a Shock Top: Ruby Fresh and David received a Fathom IPA from Ballast Point. We’re always open to other listeners buying us drinks!

Quote-of-the-Week

• The quote from this episode comes from “The Weight of Glory”.

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.

C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Discussion

01. “Lewis’ Reluctance”

• Lewis approaches the subject of marriage with some trepidation, and for two reasons:

1. Christian teaching is extremely unpopular.

2. He wasn’t married himself, although he would later marry Joy Davidman. So this is a chapter concerning marriage… written by a bachelor… and being discussed by two bachelors! So, take this as you will…

There are two reasons why I do not particularly want to deal with marriage. The first is that the Christian doctrines on this subject are extremely unpopular. The second is that I have never been married myself, and, therefore, can speak only at second hand.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

02. “One Flesh”

• Lewis kicks things off by looking at the fundamental idea behind a Christian marriage.

The Christian Idea of marriage is based on Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism – for that is what the words ‘one flesh’ would be in modern English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact – just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

• Jack is referring to Matthew 19:1-9 concerning the “one flesh” union of man and wife:

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. So they are no longer two but one.

Matthew 19:5-6

• It is because a husband and wife are a single organism that fornication – sex outside of marriage – is wrong:

The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intending to go along with it and make up the total union. The Christian attitude does not mean that there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than about the pleasure of eating. It means that you must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to get the pleasures out of taste without swallowing and digesting, by chewing things and spitting them out again.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

• This argument against separating out the different kinds of union is the same argument Christians have historically used against contraception, since it attempts to separate the procreative and unitive aspects of the marital act.

03. “A Lasting Covenant”

• Christianity teaches that marriage is for life. However, this is not the belief of contemporary culture. While there are differences in this teaching between the different Christian denominations concerning marriage, Christians still generally take the permanent nature of marriage much more seriously than those in the secular world:

…They [the Christian denominations] all regard divorce as something like cutting up a living body, as a kind of surgical operation.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

• David paraphrased the quote given in Episode 3 from the encyclical Ut Unum Sint:

What unites us is much greater than what divides us.

John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint

• Matt told the story of a retreat he went on with John Eldredge, the author of popular books such as “Wild At Heart”. The sexual act is like gluing two pieces of paper together and then trying to separate them again. It ends messily…
• The modern world thinks of marriage like a business deal, something that dissolves when the parties can’t agree.

They [the Christian denominations] are all agreed that it is more like having both your legs cut off than it is like dissolving a business partnership or even deserting a regiment. What they all disagree with is the modern view that it is a simple readjustment of partners, to be made whenever people feel they are no longer in love with one another, or when either of them falls in love with someone else.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

04. “Deception”

• Jack explains that he doesn’t base the permanence of marriage on chastity, the virtue we discussed in the previous episode. Instead, he founds the permanence of marriage in one of the cardinal virtues which we discussed in Episode 14. He roots it in Justice since, when we get married, we promise to stay with that person in sickness and health until death.

Everyone who has been married in a church has made a public, solemn promise to stick to his (or her) partner till death. The duty of keeping that promise has no special connection with sexual morality: it is in the same position as any other promise. If, as modern people are always telling us, the sexual impulse is just like all other impulses, then it ought to be treated like all our other impulses; and as their indulgence is controlled by our promises, so should its be.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

• Some people would say that they didn’t really mean the promises they made on their wedding wedding day. Jack asks these individuals, who were they trying to hoodwink?

To this someone may reply that he regarded the promise made in church as a mere formality and never intended to keep it. Whom, then, was he trying to deceive when he made it? God? That was really very unwise. Himself? That was not very much wiser. The bride, or bridegroom, or the ‘in-laws’? That was treacherous.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

• Matt and David went on a little tangent for a while talking about Avalon, a board game entirely based around deception, rather similar to another game called Mafia.
• Lewis suggests that sometimes one or both parties in a marriage are trying to deceive society:

More often, I think, the couple (or one of them) hoped to deceive the public. They wanted the respectability that is attached to marriage without intending to pay the price: that is, they were imposters, they cheated.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

• In response to this, Lewis rather shockingly says that perhaps it best that those with this mindset not marry at all:

If people do not believe in permanent marriage, it is perhaps better that they should live together unmarried than that they should make vows they do not mean to keep … one fault is not mended by adding another: unchastity is not improved by adding perjury.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

• David pushed back a bit on this idea, suggesting that help, both natural and supernatural, might come to those even with an imperfect conception of marriage.
• David and Matt then took a little bit of time to offer some qualifying statements to Lewis’ rather stark the intent to “deceive” in marriage. What Lewis is describing here is not every marriage that ends in divorce. He’s also going to flesh things out further as the chapter goes on. Finally, David brought up the issue of “raw materials” which was discussed in the episode on morality and psychoanalysis.

05. “Fleeting Feelings”

• Some might object to Lewis’ caricature and say that people get married when they think themselves in love. However, when they find themselves no longer in love with that person, it makes sense to end the marriage. After all, why stay married to someone whom you don’t love? In response to this, Lewis asks, if we only stay married based upon how we feel, why make the promises at all?

If love is the whole thing, then the promise can add nothing; and if it adds nothing, then it should not be made … As Chesterton pointed out, those who are in love have a natural inclination to bind themselves by promises. Love songs all over the world are full of vows of eternal constancy … A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise never to have a headache or always to feel hungry.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

• Love is a choice, not simply a feeling. Matt explained this is terms of our relationship with God, bringing up the example of St. Teresa of Calcutta who endured a “dark night of the soul” during her final years, when she felt an absence of the feeling of God’s presence … and she yet continued with her mission regardless.

06. “Practical Reasons and True Love”

• Why might you want to keep a couple together who no longer feel the same kind of love for each other as they did in the early days? Lewis offers three practical reasons, notably focussed on the wife and children:

1. Provide a home for the children.

2. Protect the woman who will have sacrifice much.

3. Protect the woman from just being dropped.

But what, it may be asked, is the use of keeping two people together if they are no longer in love There are several sound, social reasons; to provide a home for their children, to protect the woman (who has probably sacrificed or damaged her own career by getting married) from being dropped whenever the man is tired of her.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

• It’s not that “being in love” is a bad thing. It’s just not the best thing:

[They] like thinking in terms of good and bad, not of good, better, and best, or bad, worse and worst … What we call “being in love” is a glorious state, and, in several ways, good for us. It helps to make us generous and courageous, it opens our eyes not only to the beauty of the beloved but to all beauty, and it subordinates (especially at first) our merely animal sexuality; in that sense, love is the great conqueror of lust. No one in his senses would deny that being in love is far better than either common sensuality or gold self-centredness.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

• It’s not the best thing because feelings never least, at least in the same way or with the same intensity:

Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

• Matt complains about Millennials for a while… 🙂
• Love is seeking the good of the other person, even if it costs you something…even a lot.

07. “Deep Unity”

• While the feelings can diminish or cease, it can be replaced by something else: a deep unity.

Love in this second sense – love as distinct from “being in love” is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both parents ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

• We do this for our own selves all the time, loving ourselves even when we don’t like ourselves. David quoted the Catholic speaker Jackie Angel (nee Jackie Francois) who wrote about wanting to punch her husband in the face sometimes! 😉
• The feeling of “being in love” and this “willing to love” are then contrasted:

They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be “in love” with someone else … It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

• David extended this analogy, contrasting the behaviour of a car engine when you first turn on the ignition to when you’re cruising on the freeway. You might also use the analogy where you contrast the explosion necessary for a spaceship to break the earth’s orbit and then the piloting of the craft once it is in space.
• Since the episode was running long and they had finished our beers, Matt and David opened a bottle of Glenfiddich 12 scotch.

08. “Experience”

• Some readers (and listeners) might argue that Lewis simply don’t know what we’re talking about when it comes to marriage. To quote Lewis:

If you disagree with me, of course, you will say, ‘He knows nothing about it, he is not married.’ You may quite possibly be right.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

• However, Lewis asks those to object to make very sure that they are objecting based on their own experiences, rather than on what they have read in novels and seen in movies.

Make quite sure that you are judging me by what you really know from your own experience and from watching the lives of your friends, and not by ideas you have derived from novels and films.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

• Matt rambles on about “The Notebook“, a Nicholas Spark’s novel, which was made into a very popular movie. Please pray for him!
• The same feelings of love cannot last, but they can be transformed into something else beautiful:

If you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest. What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss fo the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, whoa re then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

09. “Head Over Heels”

• Movies and novels often tell us that falling in love is irresistible, but Lewis doesn’t think this is really the case. We can admire good qualities in others, but he still thinks it’s largely a matter of will to choose whether or not to indulge these feelings. Having said that, there are ways to encourage this indulgence…

No doubt, if our minds are full of novels and plays and sentimental songs, and our bodies full of alcohol, we shall turn any love we feel into that kind of love.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Christian Marriage

• Matt talked about St. Paul’s letters, where he discussed death and rebirth of the human spirit. It is up to us to discipline ourselves and not let our emotions run amok. David jumped in with some comments on the season of Lent, a time of penitence and self-mastery.

Wrap Up

Concluding Thoughts

• This chapter will be completed in the next episode!

• The outline for today’s chapter is available here.

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