Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The conjugal partnership that by mutual agreement makes leisure for prayer for a season is a teaching in self-control; for he added "by mutual agreement" so that no one should dissolve the marriage, and "for a season" so that the married man, practicing continence not under compulsion, should not at some point slip into sin, sparing his own union but falling into another's desire. On this principle he also said that the man who supposed it a disgrace to himself to be raising a virgin daughter would do well to give her in marriage. The purpose of each — both of the one who has made himself a eunuch and, again, of the one who has yoked himself in marriage for the begetting of children — ought to remain unyielding, not slackening toward the lesser course. For if he is able to intensify his life, he will win for himself a greater worth before God, having practiced self-control both purely and with reason; but if, having overstepped the rule he chose for greater glory, he then falls back short of the hope he set. For just as the eunuch state has its own, so too marriage has its own liturgies and services to the Lord, distinct from the other — I mean caring for children and wife. For it appears, as it seems, that the closeness of the marriage bond becomes an occasion for the man made perfect within marriage to assume providence for all within the common household; accordingly he says that bishops must be appointed from those who have practiced ruling their own household well and the whole church besides. Let each, then, in the work to which he was called, fulfill his ministry, that he may become free in Christ, receiving the wage proper to his mind's ministry.
Again, discoursing about the Law and using allegory, he says: "the married woman is bound by law to her living husband," and so on. And again: "the woman is bound for as long a time as her husband lives; but if he should die, she is free to be married, only in the Lord; but she is more blessed if she remains thus, according to my judgment." But in the earlier passage he says, "you were put to death," to the Law, not to marriage, so that you might become another's, his who was raised from the dead — a bride and a church, which must be pure both from the inner thoughts opposed to the truth and from the outer temptations, that is, from those who pursue heresies and persuade one to commit fornication away from the one husband, the almighty God — lest, as the serpent deceived Eve, called "life," we too should transgress the commandments through the gluttonous cunning that attends the heresies. The second passage establishes monogamy. For it is not, as some have expounded it, that the binding of a woman to a man should be suspected of signifying the entanglement of the flesh with corruption; for he denounces the notion of godless men who attach the invention of marriage directly to the devil — a notion by which the lawgiver himself is in danger of being blasphemed.
I think it is Tatian the Syrian who dares to dogmatize such things. At any rate he writes, word for word, in his treatise On Perfection According to the Savior: "Agreement, then, is fitting for prayer, but partnership in corruption dissolves the supplication." Quite intimidatingly, through the very act of granting permission, he forecloses it; for having again allowed the same union to occur "because of Satan" and "incontinence," he declared that the one who yields to this will be a slave to two masters — through agreement, to God, but through disagreement, to incontinence and fornication and the devil. And he says he is expounding the apostle in saying this; but he sophisticates the truth, fabricating a falsehood by means of a truth. For that incontinence and fornication are passions of the devil we too confess; but the agreement of a chaste marriage serves as mediator, leading with self-control toward prayer and, with dignity, giving in marriage toward the begetting of children. Indeed, both knowledge and the right season for begetting children are spoken of by Scripture, when it says: "Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore a son, and named him Seth: for God has raised up for me another seed instead of Abel." Do you see against whom they blaspheme, those who abhor chaste sowing and attach its origin to the devil? For the one who declared the Almighty by placing the article before the name did not simply say "God" without qualification.
As for the apostle's addition — "and come together again, because of Satan" — this forestalls precisely that: turning aside at some point into other desires. For the temporary agreement, forbidding as it does, does not utterly repel the appetites of nature; for the sake of these he again introduces the conjugal union of marriage — not into incontinence and fornication and the work of the devil, but so that one may not fall prey to incontinence and fornication and the devil. Tatian also separates the old man from the new, but not as we say it; for we too agree with him in saying that the old man is the Law and the new is the Gospel, except not in the way he wishes it, abolishing the Law as though it were of another god. Rather, the same husband and lord, in making old things new, no longer permits polygamy (for God required that then, when it was necessary to increase and multiply), but introduces monogamy for the sake of begetting children and the care of the household, for which the wife was given as a helper. And if to anyone, because of incontinence and burning, the apostle grants a second marriage by way of concession, since even this man does not sin against the covenant (for it is not forbidden by the Law), yet he does not fulfill the intensified perfection of the citizenship according to the Gospel; but the one who remains as he is, and keeps unstained the union that was dissolved by death, and obeys the dispensation with good pleasure, procures for himself a heavenly glory — by which he becomes undistracted for the Lord's service. Nor indeed does the divine providence through the Lord now, any more than of old, prescribe that one be baptized after intercourse within marriage in the same way. For the Lord does not compel believers, through the one baptism that washes them clean for the whole of their intercourse, to abstain from begetting children — the Lord who also embraced the many observances of Moses in a single baptism.
From of old, then, the Law, prophesying our regeneration through fleshly begetting, appointed baptism upon the generative deposit of seed, not abhorring the generation of man; for what appears as a man being born, this the deposit of seed is able to accomplish. Not, then, are the many acts of intercourse fruitful, but the reception by the womb confesses the generation, as the seed is fashioned into an embryo in nature's workshop. How then is marriage merely old and an invention of the Law, while the marriage kept according to the Lord is of a different kind, when it is the same God who is observed by us? For what God has joined together, man would never reasonably dissolve. Much more, then, will the Son keep what the Father commanded. And if the same is both lawgiver and evangelist, he is never at odds with himself. For the Law lives, being spiritual and understood gnostically. But we were put to death to the Law through the body of Christ, that we might become another's, his who was raised from the dead, who was foretold by the Law, so that we might bear fruit to God.
Wherefore the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good. We were put to death, then, to the Law — that is, to the sin made manifest by the Law, which it shows but does not beget, the Law refuting the underlying sin through the prescription of what must be done and the prohibition of what must not be done, so that sin might be made to appear. But if marriage according to the Law is sin, I do not know how anyone can say he has known God while saying that God's own ordinance is sin; but since the Law is holy, marriage is holy. This mystery, then, the apostle applies to Christ and the church. Just as what is born of the flesh is flesh, so too what is born of the spirit is spirit — not only in respect of birth but also in respect of instruction. At once the children are holy — the good pleasures — the soul having been espoused to God by the Lord's own words. Fornication and marriage, then, are set apart, since the devil stands far removed from God. And you too, then, were put to death to the Law through the body of Christ, that you might become another's, his who was raised from the dead; for it is understood together, closely, that they became obedient, since even according to the truth of the Law we obey the same Lord, who has long since been exhorting us.
And is it not fitting that in the case of such men the Spirit says outright that in the latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, through the hypocrisy of liars whose conscience is seared, forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful and those who have come to know the truth; for every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified through the word of God and prayer. It is not, then, obligatory to forbid marriage, nor indeed to forbid eating meat or drinking wine, for it is written: "it is good not to eat meat nor to drink wine, if it causes one's brother to stumble"; and "it is good to remain as I am" — but both the one who partakes with thanksgiving and, again, the one who does not partake, he too with thanksgiving —
let him live with self-controlled enjoyment, according to reason. And in general all the letters of the apostle, teaching chastity and self-control concerning marriage, concerning the begetting of children, and concerning the management of the household, containing countless commandments, nowhere set aside chaste marriage; but preserving the sequence of the Law, they receive both alike into the Gospel — both the man who uses marriage thankfully to God and chastely, and the man who lives in the eunuch state as the Lord wishes, according as each was called, choosing it steadfastly and perfectly. And the land of Jacob was praised above all the earth, says the prophet, glorifying the vessel of his spirit. And there is one who runs down generation, calling it corruptible and perishing, and forces the point, saying that the Savior spoke, with reference to begetting children, of not laying up treasure on earth where moth and rust destroy, and is not ashamed to add to these the prophet's words: "all of you, like a garment, will grow old, and the moth will devour you." But we too do not gainsay Scripture, that our bodies are corruptible and by nature subject to flux; and perhaps he was prophesying corruption to those to whom he spoke as sinners. But the Savior did not speak concerning the begetting of children, but was exhorting to a sharing of goods in common those who acquire only an abundance of wealth without wishing to aid those in need.
Wherefore he says: "work not for the food that perishes, but for that which endures to eternal life." And likewise they also bring forward that saying: "the sons of that age neither marry nor are given in marriage." But this question concerning the resurrection of the dead — if one examines both the saying and those who were asking it — one will find that the Lord does not disapprove of marriage, but is addressing the expectation of fleshly desire in connection with the resurrection. And the phrase "the sons of this age" he did not say in contrast to sons of some other age, but equivalently to "those who have come to be in this age," who, being sons through birth, both beget and are begotten, since no one will pass into this life without birth; but this birth, admitting the same corruption, no longer awaits the one who has once been separated from this life. "One is your father, who is in the heavens" — but he himself is also father of all according to creation. "Call no one your father on earth," he says — that is, do not consider the one who sowed you, the fleshly sowing of your substance, to be the cause, but a co-cause of birth, or rather a servant of birth.
Thus, then, he wishes us, having turned back again, to become like children, having come to know the true Father, having been regenerated through water — this being a different sowing from the one in creation. "Yes," he says, "the unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord; but the married man — how shall he please his wife?" But what then? Is it not permitted also for the wife, pleasing God, to give thanks to God together? And is it not granted also to the married man, along with his spouse, to be anxious about the things of the Lord? But just as the unmarried woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit, so too the married woman is anxious about the things of her husband and the things of the Lord, in the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit; for both are holy in the Lord, the one as wife, the other as virgin. And to shame and check those prone to a second marriage, the apostle fittingly raises his voice to a high pitch and says at once: "every sin is outside the body; but he who commits fornication sins against his own body."
But if anyone dares to call marriage fornication, he runs back again to the Law and the Lord and blasphemes. For just as covetousness is called fornication, being opposed to sufficiency, and just as idolatry is a distribution from the one to the many gods, so fornication is a falling away from the one marriage into the many; for in three ways, as we have said, both "fornication" and "adultery" are taken by the apostle. Concerning these the prophet says: "you were sold for your sins," and again: "you were defiled in a foreign land" — regarding as polluted the union entangled with a body not one's own, and not the one given for begetting children within a lawful union. Whence also the apostle says: "I wish, then, that younger women marry, bear children, manage the household, giving no occasion to the adversary for reviling; for already some have turned aside after Satan."
Indeed, he also fully approves the husband of one wife, whether he be presbyter or deacon or layman, using marriage blamelessly; "and she will be saved through childbearing." Again, too, the Savior, calling the Jews an evil and adulterous generation, teaches that they, not having known the Law as the Law intends, but having followed the tradition of the elders and the commandments of men, commit adultery against the Law — not having received it as a husband and lord of their virginity. Perhaps, too, he knows them to be enslaved to alien desires, on account of which, continually enslaved to their sins, they were sold to foreigners, since among the Jews wives were not appointed to be held in common, but adultery too was forbidden. And the one who said, "I have married a wife, and I cannot come to the dinner," was a divine example set forth as a reproof of those who abandon the divine commandment for the sake of pleasures, since by this reasoning neither the righteous before the coming nor those who married after the coming, even if they be apostles, will be saved. And if they should again bring forward that saying, as the prophet says, "I have grown old among all my enemies," let them understand "enemies" to mean sins; for there is one particular sin, not marriage, but fornication, since otherwise they must also call birth itself a sin, and the creator of birth.
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