Engaging the Doctrine of Marriage. Matthew Levering

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СКАЧАТЬ are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself.” With respect to this passage, his interpretation concurs with that of the New Testament scholar Adeline Fehribach in her book The Women in the Life of the Bridegroom.140

In Pitre’s analysis, then, a tension emerges between the “already” and the “not yet,” a tension that characterizes the New Testament’s eschatology as a whole. Already, through his Cross and Resurrection, Christ has accomplished the perfect marriage of the divine Bridegroom with his people (Israel reconfigured around the Messiah, now with the Gentiles included). But the marriage of God and humanity, though in this sense accomplished already by Christ, awaits its full accomplishment as, over the course of ongoing history, the full number of the elect is brought in and the members of the Church are sanctified by the power of his Cross and Resurrection. Thus, even though the marriage of God and humanity is accomplished by Christ when he is “glorified” on the Cross (as Pitre says), it is also correct to add—as Pitre does in light of the book of Revelation—that “all of human history is headed toward the wedding supper of the Lamb and the unveiling of the bride of Christ.”141 The Christian understanding of the end of time is not about destruction but rather is about the glorious “‘unveiling’ (Greek apokalypsis) of the bride of Christ. Just as an ancient Jewish bridegroom would lift the veil of his bride on their wedding day, so too at the end of time Jesus will unveil the glory of his bride, the New Jerusalem.”142 Among the characteristics of the Bride are perfect holiness, perfect peace, perfect worship, absence of corruption and death, and the fact that the blessed “shall see his face”—the face of God and the Lamb (Rev 22:4), the face of the Bridegroom who has everlastingly married his beloved people.

Pitre brings his book to a close by displaying the theme of the covenantal marriage of God and humanity as it informs the teaching of the Church Fathers—especially their teaching on the sacraments and the religious life—as well as the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and recent popes. Rather than tracking his discussion of the Fathers, let me simply draw attention to the passages of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that Pitre quotes. First, as has been one of the main points of Pitre’s book, the Catechism states that “[t]he entire Christian life bears the mark of the spousal love of Christ and the Church” (§1617). Second, the Catechism states the following: “The nuptial covenant between God and his people Israel had prepared the way for the new and everlasting covenant in which the Son of God, by becoming incarnate and giving his life, has united to himself in a certain way all mankind saved by him, thus preparing for ‘the wedding-feast of the Lamb’ [Rev 19:7]” (§1612).143 Both of these quotations come from the Catechism’s section on the sacrament of marriage.

At this stage, however, we must turn again to our original question.144 In the prophetic books of the Old Testament, it certainly can seem as though God the lover is also God the abuser. Let me now examine why this is so.

      II. YHWH the Abusive Male?

      What are we to make of passages such as the following?

      •“The Lord said: Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks, glancing wantonly with their eyes, mincing along as they go, tinkling with their feet; the Lord will smite with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will lay bare their secret parts” (Is 3:16–17).

      •“Lift up your eyes and see those who come from the north. Where is the flock that was given you, your beautiful flock? What will you say when they set as head over you those whom you yourself have taught to be friends to you? Will not pangs take hold of you, like those of a woman in travail? And if you say in your heart, ‘Why have these things come upon me?’ it is for the greatness of your iniquity that your skirts are lifted up and you suffer violence” (Jer 13:20–22).

      •“Thus says the Lord God, Because your shame was laid bare and your nakedness uncovered in your harlotries with your lovers, and because of all your idols, and because of the blood of your children that you gave to them, therefore, behold, I will gather all your lovers, with whom you took pleasure, all those you loved and all those you loathed; I will gather them against you from every side, and will uncover your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness. And I will judge you as women who break wedlock and shed blood are judged, and bring upon you the blood of wrath and jealousy. And I will give you into the hand of your lovers, and they shall throw down your vaulted chamber and break down your lofty places; they shall strip you of your clothes and take your fair jewels, and leave you naked and bare. . . . Because you have not remembered the days of your youth, but have enraged me with all these things; therefore, behold, I will requite your deeds upon your head, says the Lord God” (Ezek 16:36–39, 43).

      •“Plead with your mother, plead—for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband—that she put away her harlotry from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts; lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and set her like a parched land, and slay her with thirst” (Hos 2:2–3).

      •“Therefore I will take back my grain in its time, and my wine in its season; and I will take away my wool and my flax, which were to cover her nakedness. Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall rescue her out of my hand. And I will put an end to all her mirth, her feasts, her new moons, her sabbaths, and all her appointed feasts. And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, ‘These are my hire, which my lovers have given me.’ I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall devour them. And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals, when she burned incense to them and decked herself with her ring and jewelry, and went after her lovers, and forgot me, says the Lord” (Hos 2:9–13).

      •“Behold, I am against you [Nineveh], says the Lord of hosts, and will lift up your skirts over your face; and I will let nations look on your nakedness and kingdoms on your shame. I will throw filth at you and treat you with contempt, and make you a gazingstock” (Nahum 3:5–6).

      •“Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground without a throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans! For you shall no more be called tender and delicate. Take the millstones and grind meal, put off your veil, strip off your robe, uncover your legs, pass through the rivers. Your nakedness shall be uncovered, and your shame shall be seen. I will take vengeance, and I will spare no man” (Isa 47:1–3).

With regard especially to Nahum 3 and Isaiah 47, Gerlinde Baumann argues that it is a simple matter: “YHWH appears as the rapist.”145 Drawing on the work of Majella Franzmann, Baumann adds that although “[t]he image of YHWH as rapist can be explained from the context in which the texts originated,” nonetheless “[t]his kind of male God-as-rapist image has been handed down for thousands of years without being subjected to any kind of fundamental critique.”146

Is this claim true? I note that in Jerome’s commentary on Nahum 3:5–6, Jerome first emphasizes that Nahum 3 and Ezekiel 16 are using a “metaphor of an adulterous woman” that is not meant to be taken literally.147 Specifically with respect to Nahum 3:5, where the Lord appears to be describing himself in an act of rape, Jerome hastens to make clear that one would be profoundly misinterpreting the passage if one interpreted it along such lines. On the contrary, says Jerome, in Nahum 3:5 the Lord intends to communicate the following: “although you do not deserve it, I will make you see my virtues, precepts, and words, which you have hidden behind your back. For I commanded that my words should always be moving before your eyes, and should be bound and hanging down.”148 Far from refusing to subject “to any kind of fundamental critique” the “male God-as-rapist image” found in Nahum 3:5–6, Jerome insists sharply that God must not be thought of as a male rapist. For Jerome, the real meaning is that God, as “the true doctor [who] comes from heaven” (namely Christ), will show Nineveh his “virtues, precepts, and words.”149 It may seem that such an interpretation is quite a stretch, but this is precisely СКАЧАТЬ