One Flesh

Summary

The Lord of Spirits Podcast: "One Flesh"

Episode Date: January 27, 2023
Hosts: Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick & Fr. Stephen De Young
Podcast Theme: The Seen and Unseen World in Orthodox Christian Tradition
Episode Focus: The Mystery of Marriage—its origins, theology, history, spiritual meaning, and implications for Orthodox Christian life

---

Episode Overview

This episode explores the spiritual reality and ancient roots of marriage within the Orthodox Christian tradition. The hosts trace marriage from its biblical beginnings, through patriarchal stories, its treatment by the prophets and Christ himself, and its ultimate meaning as an icon of Christ's union with the Church. Using scripture, theology, and historical context, Frs. Andrew and Stephen connect the seen and unseen aspects of marriage, unravel its sacramental nature, and highlight how these insights affect Orthodox Christian communal and parish life today.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

---

1. Marriage in the Creation Narrative

Timestamps: 06:11–26:35

• Humanity in God's Image

  • Humanity is created to bear the image of God—not a static quality, but a capacity to be exercised in the world (06:19–06:33).
  • Both male and female are explicitly said to bear God’s image—a radical notion for the ancient world (07:04–11:04).
    • Fr. Andrew: “This is radical. Here we go. Somebody will quote this, right? The Bible teaches radical egalitarianism for the Bronze Age.” (11:13)
  • Contrasts with ancient Greek thought (Aristotle, Hippocratic texts), which often saw women as a different (even defective) species (08:24–10:12).

• Adam's Aloneness and the Creation of Woman

  • The 'aloneness' of Adam is not psychological loneliness but the lack of another to fulfill the command to "fill the earth and subdue it" (13:15–13:49).
  • Woman (Eve) is created from Adam's "side," not merely a rib: the word indicates being pulled apart into two which are rejoined in "one flesh" through marriage (18:24–19:50).
    • Fr. Stephen: "The word in Hebrew and Greek, they do not mean rib. ... Every other time, it means 'side,' as in one half of a structure." (18:25–19:04)
  • The "one flesh" union of husband and wife mirrors the primordial human wholeness.

• Wedding as Sacrament

  • Humanity is divided into male and female, and marriage reunites two as one flesh, foundational to human purpose and the oldest sacrament (25:34–26:35).

---

2. Patriarchal Marriages: Patterns and Lessons

Timestamps: 26:55–55:24

• Abraham and Sarah: Archetype of faithfulness, though Abraham's faith is notably weakest in his dealings with Sarah (28:15–30:44).

• Isaac and Rebecca: The Bible’s ideal marriage. Isaac loves Rebecca (arranged marriage), which was radical and atypical for their era (30:58–34:19).

  • Romantic love as a modern construct is discussed (35:08–39:57).
  • Biblical love is concrete, self-sacrificial, and active, not merely feeling or desire (41:45–45:23).

• Jacob, Leah, Rachel, and Concubines: The polygamy of Jacob (and others) is shown to cause endless strife and is never depicted as righteous or positive (46:15–48:52).

  • The Bible describes polygamy but does not endorse it (48:11).

• Joseph and Asenath: Their mixed marriage prompts later Jewish/Christian literature to frame her conversion and their union as a type of Gentile inclusion into God’s family (49:41–55:03).

  Notable Quote:

  • "You see with Reuben... incest problems. And all I'll say is to the modern day, polygamous situations show those same exact issues. This has never been done well." (46:52–47:18)

---

3. Marriage in Wisdom Literature and the Prophets

Timestamps: 55:40–64:07

• "Rejoice in the wife of your youth" (Proverbs 5:18): addresses faithfulness in arranged marriages and the temptation to trade in an early wife for a more desirable one later in life (55:59–57:28).

  • Faithfulness is not just about keeping commandments but fulfilling roles and responsibilities within the community and family (58:20–59:25).

• Malachi 2:13–15:

  • God rebukes those who are unfaithful to their marital covenants, linking faithfulness in marriage with faithfulness to God (61:23–62:45).

  Notable Quote (Malachi 2):

  • "Did he not make them one with a portion of the spirit in their union?" (88:02–88:47)
  • "If you do these things, then you will be blessed. ... Not if you do the sacrifices correctly." (63:00–64:07)

---

4. Marriage in the New Testament

Timestamps: 64:33–70:40

• Marital Qualifications for Clergy: "Husband of one wife" more about lifelong faithfulness than about simultaneous polygamy (64:38–65:44).
• Marriage as Norm in Christian Life: Celibacy is not superior; the married state is assumed as typical for Christian leaders and laity, with singleness or celibacy a specific vocation (67:57–70:14).

---

5. Teachings of Christ on Marriage

Timestamps: 70:46–78:17

• Matthew 19:3–12: Christ roots marriage in God’s original intent—male and female, joined as one flesh by God. Divorce is a concession for human hardness of heart, not part of God's design (70:56–74:07).
• Celibacy as a Calling: Christ calls celibacy a special gift; the expectation is marriage unless one is called otherwise (77:16–78:10).
• Polygamy in the Old Covenant: Even where not explicitly prohibited, it is described negatively; Deuteronomy and Leviticus condemned it through idiomatic language about "sister to sister" (78:17–81:26).

---

6. Development of Jewish and Christian Wedding Rituals

Timestamps: 86:28–123:43

• Malachi 2:15 as Sacramental Proof-Text:

  • "God makes them one and gives a portion of the spirit in their union. That’s not a human activity, not a contract. That's a sacrament." (92:12–92:49)

• Who Officiated Ancient Weddings?:

  • Initially, patriarchs and then presbyters (elders); institutionalized as families and then communities grew (95:07–96:55).

• Bride Price, Dowry, and Dower:

  • Bride price was restitution, not a purchase—marriage meant loss of labor and support for the bride’s family (97:02–103:10).

  Memorable Story:

  • Fr. Andrew: "I could not take this man's daughter and his dog... So we left the dog." (102:11–103:10)

• Transition from Pagan/Roman to Christian Weddings:

  • Roman weddings full of idolatrous rituals, invoking household gods and superstitions (112:06–117:41).
  • Christians, even before formalized church weddings, did not practice such customs; early Christian weddings were shaped by Jewish and reformed Gentile traditions, later incorporating the Eucharist (119:31–123:25).

• Ongoing Cultural Adaptation:

  • Christian communities adapt elements from surrounding cultures, but must discern what is consistent with a Christian vision of marriage (129:12–130:18).

---

7. Sacramental Mystery: Marriage as Christ and the Church

Timestamps: 139:29–164:38

• Marriage as Icon of Theosis:

  • Ephesians 5:32: "This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church." (140:35–140:43)
  • The marital union is not only analogous to, but derives its meaning from, the union of Christ and his Church (149:39–149:52).

• Old Testament Nuptial Imagery:

  • God's relationship to Israel frequently depicted as marriage; unfaithful Israel as an adulterous spouse (Jeremiah, Hosea, Ezekiel 16).

• Christ as Bridegroom:

  • NT parables, the crucifixion (Christ’s side opened as Adam’s was), and Revelation’s marriage supper of the Lamb complete the pattern (155:38–159:12).

  Notable Quotes:

  • "Marriage is the participation in this larger reality of Christ’s marriage with the Church, this cosmic reality of Christ’s work, and therefore is a means and path of theosis." (160:30–161:07)

---

8. Marriage as Means of Salvation and Community

Timestamps: 161:12–179:32

• Married Life as Theosis:
  • Marriage is not an end in itself, but a means of serving, self-sacrificing, and participating in God’s life (163:09–164:13).
  • The Holy Spirit animates the marriage; faithfulness to Christian life draws the Spirit into that union (165:13–166:20).
  • Even if only one spouse is striving for faithfulness, it sanctifies the marriage and the other (168:05–168:55).

---

9. Critique of the "Nuclear Family" and True Christian Community

Timestamps: 170:19–179:32

• Expanding Family Beyond the Nuclear Model:

  • Many who are single, widowed, or childless feel left out by the narrow nuclear family ideal; ancient Christian and Hebrew family meant a large, supportive, extended household (171:09–174:27).

  Fr. Andrew:

  • "That idea of a family is just too small... No human can fulfill all another’s needs." (172:31–173:40)
  • "Every Christian becomes part of the household of God. Brothers and sisters was meant completely seriously." (175:04–176:33)
  • "Even if you’re not a married person, you're still part of this household... a family." (177:40–177:54)

• Parishes as Spiritual Families:

  • Orthodox parishes must live as extended families, providing roles, support, and community for all—married, single, with or without children.

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• "The Bible teaches radical egalitarianism for the Bronze Age." – Fr. Andrew (11:13)
• "The word in Hebrew and Greek, they do not mean rib. ... Every other time, it means 'side,' as in one half of a structure." – Fr. Stephen (18:25)
• "Love is always something concrete, something you do, something you choose, regardless of how you feel." – Fr. Andrew (42:19–42:54)
• "Marriage is a means for salvation, a means of theosis, a means of becoming one with God." – Fr. Stephen (163:33)
• "No human can do that for any other human." – Fr. Andrew on the myth of fulfillment by a spouse (173:32)
• "Every Christian becomes part of the household of God." – Fr. Andrew (175:22)

---

Key Timestamps for Reference

• 06:11–26:35 – Creation, the meaning of "one flesh"
• 26:55–55:24 – Patriarchal marital models
• 61:23–64:07 – Malachi’s challenge on marital faithfulness
• 70:56–77:03 – Christ’s teaching on marriage and divorce
• 86:28–92:49 – The Spirit in marriage (Malachi 2:15) as the sacramental core
• 112:06–119:13 – Pagan Roman wedding customs vs. Christian
• 139:29–142:18 – Ephesians 5 and the Christ-church mystery
• 170:19–179:32 – Extended parish family; critique of the nuclear family

---

Summary Table: The Progression of Marriage in Salvation History

| Era/Context | Marriage Theme | |--------------------------|--------------------------------------------------| | Genesis Creation | Image of God, reunion of divided humanity | | Patriarchs | Faithfulness, problems of polygamy, conversion | | Wisdom/Prophets | Joy and fidelity, marriage as covenant, God’s faithfulness | | Christ’s Teaching | Return to original intent, sacramental union by God | | Early Church | Sacrament, proof-texts, Eucharistic context | | NT Theology | Marriage as icon of Christ and Church, theosis | | Orthodox Practice | Marriage as communal mystery, family as parish |

---

Concluding Message

The Orthodox Christian understanding of marriage is deeply spiritual, ancient, and cosmic in dimension—rooted in God’s original creation, expressed in Israel’s vocation, fulfilled in Christ’s union with the Church, and sacramentally alive in the daily lives of believers. Marriage is an icon, a means of theosis, and the family of God is radically inclusive, extending healing, purpose, and belonging to all.

---

To connect, learn, or ask follow-up questions, the hosts invite listeners to email or message the podcast.

---

Next Live Broadcast: 2nd and 4th Thursdays, 7 pm Eastern / 4 pm Pacific
Learn more and support the show: Ancient Faith

Transcript

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He will be a staff for the righteous with which for them to stand and not to fall. And he will be the light of the nations and the hope of those whose hearts are troubled. All who dwell on the earth will fall down and worship him. And they will praise and bless and celebrate with song the lord of spirits. First Enoch, chapter 48, verses 4 through 5. The modern world doesn't acknowledge, but is nevertheless haunted by spirits and angels, demons and saints. In our time, many yearn to break free of the prison of a flat secular materialism, to see and to know reality as it truly is. What is this spiritual reality like? How do we engage with it? Well, how do we permeate everyday life with spiritual presence? Orthodox Christian priests Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Fr. Stephen DeYoung host this live call in show focused on enchantment in creation, the union of the seen and unseen as made by God and experienced by mankind throughout history. Welcome to the Lord of Spirits.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Good evening giant killers, dragon slayers, everyone out there in radio land, you are listening to the Lord of Spirits podcast. My co Host, the Very Reverend Dr. Stephen DeYoung is with me from Lafayette, Louisiana. And I'm Father Andrew Stephen Damick in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. And if you're listening to us live, you can call in at 855-AF-RADIO. That's 855-2372-346855. Afraidio Montes Ka Trudy is taking those calls tonight and we're going to get to those in the second part of our show. But before we do that, on October 26th through 29th, 2023, at the Antiochian Village in Western Pennsylvania, which I do not live near, that is the other Pennsylvania. I mean it's fine, but I just don't live there. We are going to be holding the first ever Lord of Spirits conference. Father Stephen and I are going to be there as well as Fathers David Subu and Lucas Christiansen. And we are very happy to mention that Archbishop Alexander Gallitzin will be speaking as well.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Also, folks, if you see Archbishop Alexander, do not harass him about Lord of Spirits. Yeah, please leave Ladika alone. Right, Leave him alone.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We're just very happy that he's coming.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, he might reconsider.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Don't walk up to him in a bat costume and expect that he's gonna know what that's about.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, he might.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But yeah, there will be a D and D tournament as Father Stephen has forced me to mention on air repeatedly. We're still going to be, we're still working on the Schedule. But God willing, we're going to get some details out to you very soon. I have to say, though, that rooms are selling very fast. Like, really fast. It's crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy how fast they're selling. So if you want to come, I suggest you make up your mind to come. You can register and see what details are currently [e-mail] an events.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

If the rooms sell out, I think we need to go straight. Or when the rooms sell out, I think we need to go straight to opening up an area for tent camping mud and just turn this into, like Lord of Spirits, Woodstock.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There we go. Yeah, that'd be good in some ways, but not in others.

Tonight, though, we're going to be continuing our series on the sacraments, the Orthodox Church, and we're going to be discussing the mystery of Holy Mary matrimony. Is marriage merely a human institution? Does it exist outside the church? Did the Church invent it as a sacrament in the 4th century? What does the rite of marriage actually do? That's what we're going to be discussing. And this is also one of those episodes that we have to say, even though we will not be getting graphic parents, please listen to this one before you consider sharing it with younger kids. Just FYI.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So I didn't warn you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, exactly. So is this episode all about how marriage is just a thing that any two people who really love each other can go ahead and do?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's what I thought.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Also, once again, I've talked to you folks. I'm including you even in this, Father Andrew. Now, okay, I've talked to you folks at Ancient Faith repeatedly about not wanting to be associated with that guy who was talking before we went live.

He's frankly a heretic. He should not be on your airwaves. I don't even want to listen to him. I have never listened to him. But the little bits I've had to hear have set my teeth on edge, as it were.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, the 15,000 people who are not listening to this live do not even know what you're talking about. But so much the better.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Just in case, right? Disassociated, shunned, anathema.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But amen.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

As you mentioned, marriage is what brings us together today.

Do you even get that reference?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I do. I.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay, I saw that when it first.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Came out, as I'm sure you did as well.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, yes, Many of our zygotes at.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The time, but back in the 1980s, when life is so much simpler and most of the popular music Was so much happier.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, that's true, actually. Not all of it, though. Not all of it. Not the stuff from Britain. Well.

Wham aside. Okay, anyway, we're digressing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We'Re gonna do what we usually do and start our discussion with the creation of humanity.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Just a lot of good material in Adam, I tell you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Was that a deliberate pun?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'll let you take that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay. So.

As we've talked about, of course, many times, right. On the show.

That humanity is created to bear the image of God.

And we're phrasing that way on purpose.

As longtime listeners will know, because this is sort of a verbal idea.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The image of God is not sort of a static thing or a quality or something, but is a capacity that we are commanded to exercise in the world. And right off the bat, the first time humanity as male and female. Right. The first time we get the two biological sexes is in actually the end of Genesis 1, when we're told that humanity is created in the image of God, and male and female, God created them. Right. And this is.

We've heard this so often, it doesn't strike us. And we're also living in a world which, as secular and materialistic as it may have become, is still deeply informed by Christianity.

So that this doesn't hit us in the way it would have originally.

Not just the idea that both male and female humans bear the image of God in the world. Right. But even that they're both human.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Is pretty big for the late Bronze Age.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, not only that, you know, like. Right. That. That ancient pagans generally regarded humans from various parts of the world as not even being from the same origin. So, like, the idea of humanity all kind of coming from one thing is not a thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, from one. From one source. Right. Yeah, yeah. And then you get to the details of men and women in particular.

You find somebody like aristotle in the 4th century BC who is a bold innovator, virtually a feminist by 4th century standard revolutionary, because he's the first person we know of to break with preceding Greek thought and say that men and women are the same species.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, there is a but. But he did think they're the same species. If you read the Hippocratic Corpus, Right. Which you may be able to tell from the name, like, the Hippocratic Oath is the oath that physicians take. Right. The Hippocratic Corpus is sort of a collection. Not all of it goes back to Hippocrates himself, but a collection of Greek.

Medical texts. They're very clear that men and women are not the same species.

They are two different types of organisms.

But Aristotle says they are the same. Now.

He'S only a feminist for his time because he says that female humans are sort of defective male humans.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Isn't the idea that the fetus tries to become male and the ones that fail are female are born female?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. So he kind of thinks women are a birth defect, but they're still human.

Right.

But that Aristotle's medical stuff is fascinating to me because it's so elaborate and so well worked out and so systematic and it makes so much sense. Except none of it's true. Right. It's all completely wrong. Amazing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You know, he's like a great world building fantasy author.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There is, there's just no connection to actual biology.

But, but so if that in the 4th century BC, if that's a bold innovation.

Right. We're talking about a text that has its roots at least, we'll say 700 years before that.

At least. Yeah, right. 700 years before that. That says that not only are male and female humans both human, but both created by God, both bearing the image of God. Right. And therefore presented as being of equal value as human beings.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. That's crazy. In the ancient world.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. So, so I mean, this is radical. This is radical.

Here we go. Somebody will quote this, right? The Bible teaches radical egalitarianism for the Bronze Age. To leave off the. For the Bronze Age part.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But.

It'S going to be somebody's.

Phone ringtone.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Just quote the rest and send your angry emails when you read that quote to Father Andrew. Ancientfaith.com Amen.

So.

We then get into chapter two of Genesis. We're not going through the whole Bible this slow. I know that's the kind of thing we might do someday on this show, but not today. Today is not that day. But we get into the second chapter and there is this problem of Adam's aloneness. Right. This is the first time where God says something is not good. Everything else he created he said is good. He says it is not good that man is alone on the earth. And we tend, as we do as modern Western people to think of this in sort of psychological terms.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Adam just feels really bad.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Adam's lonely. He's a sad boy in the garden because he's, he's all alone. And then, you know, the naming of the animals follows this. And I have literally heard people teach this as if.

The animals were brought before Adam to see if he could mate with any of them.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Already we're Heading up against the parental advisory with the mention.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. You know, like, oh no, I can't marry this zebra.

No, can't marry that goat either.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And God throws up his hands.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Come on, Adam, look at all these animals. Yeah. Like God know that. Right. No, no. Right. None of that is true. That is fractally wrong, that whole foregoing interpretation.

So in actuality, the idea of aloneness here is talking about the fact that there's only one of him. Right. Because remember, there's two commandments given to humanity to fill the earth and subdue it. Right. Put things in order, fill them with life.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Adam can't fill the world with life by himself.

He can't reproduce by budding. That's not a power or capacity that he has. Right.

So that's what the aloneness is about. Right. As we've mentioned on the show before, the naming of the animals we have, especially in Hittite excavations, we have images of the king.

Standing with a rod and naming wild animals.

And so this is an image of the king's authority to establish justice. Right. That he's putting things in order. So the wild animals are sort of being tamed or domesticated by him by virtue of him naming them, comprehending them. Right. So that's Adam doing that part of the job. So the idea is, well, Adam can do this one part of the job, but he can't do the other part of the job.

And so for that to happen.

God says he needs in Hebrew an atzer.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Kenegdo, which is the name of my next band.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, I thought he was that guy who got his arm cut off in the Mos Eisley Cantina. But wait, that was Pon da Baba. Nevermind.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's probably true. It does sound like a George Lucas style name.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I really didn't think about that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

If I saw the Hasbro Black series Eightzer Kadegdo figure, it would totally fit. There was like a hammerhead or something in there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, this gets translated in the good old King James. Help meet.

Which you see this sometimes like as a single word.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Help.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Meat. Yeah, but. But really it's. Which I mean is. You can do that in English, but really it's. It's help. And then meat is a more slightly archaic usage of meat, meaning appropriate. Right. Which you know, like when we. We translate the Oxyonestine hymn as it is truly meat.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. It is eaten. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Yes, Right. It's truly meat and. Right. Or just. Yeah. Which in Greek is just action Este. Just Two words.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it assumes that it. Yeah.

So, yeah. So eights are. There is. Is like a helper or an assistant. Right. Someone who's going to cooperate in some sort of work. And then connecto means roughly fitting. This has a literal sense.

That refers to.

The biology of male and female organisms fitting together.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He said euphemistically. But it goes beyond that. It includes that. But it goes beyond that.

It's like two puzzle pieces that fit together.

Right. Two halves of a whole that sort of dovetail.

Right. It sort of meet. Meet in the middle and form one thing. Right. So Adam, at this point already, and I'm saying this to distinguish from certain other theories that you'll find in certain ancient authors, Adam is not an androgynous being.

Right, Right. At this point.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Because if. If he needs someone to fit together with him, then that means he's not both things or.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, yeah, Right. He is not both things. He is not neither thing. Right. He is one of the two things. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Without the other puzzle piece.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right.

And that's just implied in the language. Right. And so in order to create.

This other person, I'm now going to ruin some more Sunday School. We may have talked about this other show before, so it may be pre.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Ruined, but I get to play the etymology jingle for this, though.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

In a second.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't jump the gun. I know you're hovering on that button.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I am. It's been a while since I played it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So you were probably told.

At some point that.

Eve, even though she doesn't get called Eve until after the expulsion from paradise, that woman is made from Adam's rib.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's not what it says.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. We'll talk in a second about why it seems.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

In Hebrew or Greek.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

In Hebrew or Greek, that is not what it says. So the word that's used there. So, like, if you look up the Hebrew word.

And I think also the Greek word in most biblical Lexica, you will find the meaning rib listed. But then if you look at the instances where it is used in the Bible, in either case, Hebrew or Greek, you will find that the only place where it's translated rib is here, and everywhere else, it's translated differently. That should tip you off that something's up.

Everywhere else where this occurs. This refers to a side, and it's a side, like dorsal, ventral. It's very often used architecturally to refer to, like, one half of a symmetrical building.

So the idea here actually, in. In the text is that Adam is pulled apart. That's why he goes into this sleep like death.

Right. Because God is going to pull him in two. Right. And then the two halves get built up to be man and woman, ultimately, Adam and Eve. Right. Now you can go with the button.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right. All right, here we go.

Hey. All right, so how did we get rib?

We spent. Well, this is my fault probably, but we spent several minutes the other day discussing this to try to figure out where the rib thing comes from.

Because the word, as you said, the word in Hebrew and Greek, they do not mean rib. And I can affirm for everybody that English translations of the Bible from at least the 8th century have been translating this word as rib. So Old English, Middle English, Modern English, this is a grand old tradition of translating.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wait, wait a second, wait a second. Did you say English translations from the 8th century?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You mean all that Reformation history stuff I was taught was wrong?

Yes, that the Bible didn't exist anyway. Go ahead.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Latin until then. Yes, that's right. Yes. Right. Yes. I have read parts of the Bible in Old English. It's great, actually. It's really cool.

So, yeah, the earliest translations we have into English translate this word as rib. And they're translating not from the Greek or the Hebrew, they're translating from the Latin, vulgate. So I thought, okay, well, maybe the Latin has the word rib in there. And so the word that's there, and this is the inflected form, is costam. And when you look up, if you look that up in a Latin dictionary, it just says the first definition will be rib. And then after that it says side, side, side, various things that mean side.

So it's not super clear exactly actually why it is that English translations have been using rib for 1300 years. But it seems that possibly there was an earlier sense of rib that meant it goes all the way back into proto Indo European. The root seems to mean something like roof or covering. And so then that gets used metaphorically to refer to the rib cage, the thing that covers or holds all the organs in.

So, yeah, so English, you're going to see rib, typically, but it just really doesn't quite mean that. But this is one of these translations that doesn't seem to. We can't seem to quite shake it. It's not in every modern English translation of the Bible, but it sure isn't a lot of them. And one thing. See, this is the other part where the parental advisor kicks in. Now, so rib has been used in English long time as a slang word. To refer to women.

And then I actually discovered a weird sense from, I think, the 16th century, the phrase rib joint, which I thought and always for me has meant like a barbecue place, you know, but apparently it's used to refer to brothels. So there you are, everybody. So if you needed a good reason not to say rib anymore, when you're looking at Genesis, the opening chapters of Genesis, there you are.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I should have known better that as soon as we put that parental advisor, you just go completely out of control.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Etymology can be pretty racy at times.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, we're in a dangerous place because I was already out of control and now.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Nothing'S holding us back. Except Trudy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Who could shut this whole thing down before we're finished. She could.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Obviously we haven't offended her enough yet.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So we'll get there. So.

Side. So, like, side of beef. Yes. So Adam, when he awakens from his death, like, sleep, right. Looks, sees her, says, whoa, man. No.

Hard.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Hardbinger of haggis.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

So.

In Hebrew, it's man is ish and woman is isha.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so you have this. The. Say a similar kind of wordplay to man and woman, right. That there's a little added.

Element. He says, I will call her woman because she is from the man. Right. From ish, from me. Right, from the man.

And this is why he says, surely this is bone of my bone and flesh and my flesh. He means that literally.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

He could even call her his better half and mean it literally.

So, but. And this is why it is said that the. The two will be one flesh.

Right. And there's the whole bit about leaving your father's house and cleaving to your wife. Leaving cleave.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this is another one I just had to point out. Cleave is one of those amazing English words that means something and its exact opposite.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, yes.

And also means attacking up to three adjacent opponents in World of Warcraft. But that's a whole other topic.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

True.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So this is here at the beginning of Genesis, right? And so this is at the core we're going to see that Christ himself is going to come back to this when talking about marriage. But this is sort of the core of marriage here.

That humanity is divided into men and women. And in marriage.

At least for those two persons, they come back together and form one flesh, one being.

Right? So this is. This is the core understanding. And this is already in Genesis 2. This is before the expulsion from paradise and everything else.

Right. This is the foundational level that marriage. Right. In Our sacrament series. Right. None of the other ones have gone back this far yet. Right.

This is the earliest one. Right. And we're going to come back to why it's the earliest one. But to telegraph. Right. As we've seen from the discussion we've already had tonight.

Marriage is uniquely linked to the purpose for which man was created to exist in the world.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. So it's a foundational, almost the original sacrament, really.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

And then when we move further in Genesis, when we get. Starting with chapter 12, we get into Abraham, we get into what are called chapters 12 through 50 are the patriarchal narratives. Right. We have these stories of the. The patriarchs.

And that patriarchy doesn't get smashed. But.

And.

What makes these especially relevant to our discussion is if you're orthodox or you've ever been to an orthodox wedding service.

We reference these marriages in particular within the prayers, within the marriage blessing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right, yeah. They all start with, bless them, O Lord, as thou didst Bless Abraham and Sarah. Bless them, O Lord, as thou dost bless Isaac and Rebecca, on and on without really saying much about them. Just sort of name dropping. We assume everyone reads their Bible.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, we assume everybody knows who that is. Yes. Which we should. Which we should.

I was thinking something else, but I'll leave that unsaid. So.

We. That, of course, starts with Abraham and Sarah.

Right. And the dynamic between Abraham and Sarah in the story of Abraham is interesting, Right. Because Abraham, both in Genesis and then as that is read by, for example, St. Paul, Abraham is sort of the archetype of faithfulness.

In the Torah, Abraham is the faithful one. He's faithful even to the point of being willing to sacrifice his son.

The one place where he has problems with faithfulness is with his wife, Sarah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, he's always trying to pawn her off as. No, this is my sister.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Don't go speak her. I would prefer not to die. Pharaoh Biblic. Right.

And the whole issue with Hagar, right, this is the one place where he sort of struggles. And when I say he struggles with faithfulness, I'm not doing a pun like being faithful to his wife, though obviously that's a problem here, too. But in each of those cases, it's actually the core issue is his faithfulness to God. Right, Right. Because God has told him that he's going to have a son by Sarah when he goes and sleeps with Hagar.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. They're always trying to come up with some alternate solution.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And the reason. The reason he passes her off twice as his sister is because he's Scared someone is going to try to kill him to take her.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. So it's a lack of trust. Right. In God for protection that that manifests. That's the one point of the struggle. And so part of.

Part of what happens in the relationship between Abraham and Sarah over the course of their lives, over the course of their relationship with each other as it plays out in the story of Abraham is him learning how to be faithful to God by treating her with the kind of dignity and respect that she is due. And that really culminates at what is really a very touching story, if we pause and read it closely, of his purchasing a tomb and his burial of her.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

At the end of. At the end of their lives together.

Then you move on to their son, Isaac and Rebecca.

And Isaac and Rebecca are really presented in Genesis as the ideal couple. Like the ideal married couple. The ideal of marriage. They're Israel's sweethearts.

Right. And.

You see this especially with their actual marriage, like their wedding is described briefly in Genesis 24:67. And there's this element that of course, we again, as modern people skim over very quickly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Because it looks kind of just normal.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like, well, of course, duh, where it says Isaac loved Rebecca.

We're like, well, yeah, duh, they're getting married. I hope so. Right.

But that's a disconnect with most of world history and even a lot of the world today.

People did not fall in love and get married for most of human history. Right. This is a very, very. Well, most of our romantic love stuff is a more. I was gonna say it's a very modern thing. It's actually more like a renaissance thing. But.

That idea, right, of. Of you meet someone and you fall in love. In reality, people were married still in a lot of the world today. Everywhere in the ancient world, it was an arranged marriage that happened when you came to adulthood, usually about 13. Right. When someone went through puberty, essentially.

They were married off by arrangement of their families. Often didn't meet before the wedding day.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And I should also add, by the way, on the other side of that, that at least I know this was the case in the Greco Roman world. I'm not sure about anywhere else. But if you fell in love with someone and you became lovesick, you know, the sense of obsession with them or whatever, which, you know, in our time, like this is a thing that's celebrated.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But at that period, every pop song.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, right, exactly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Except break period songs, you could hire.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

A doctor to come and cure you of this because they Saw it as deeply debilitating and not something to be pursued. In fact, you know, probably bad for the, bad for the family because, you know, almost certainly you weren't lovesick over the person that your parents had arranged for you to marry.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a weakness of character that you would allow yourself to be carried away in such a way by.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Frivolous emotions. Yep.

So, yeah. So the fact that he loves his wife would have jumped out.

Right. Because this was an arranged marriage too. Right. We have the story of how this marriage. She's his first cousin.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Right. They send the servant off to go find her.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Abraham doesn't want him to marry a Canaanite and so sends him back to their own people, which is his uncle's house. And it's his first cousin he's never met. Right. But he loves her. Right. And so the love is something that is giving.

It's sort of like the soul to the body of their marriage. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And it also stands out that this, that's very clearly being held up as the ideal. Isaac is one of the patriarchs who only has one wife ever.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. There's no concubines, no polygamy, no nothing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We're going to come back to that later. Right. But just, just notice it here. Yeah. And this I should be clear because I said, you know, people didn't marry for romantic love. This isn't talking about romantic love either. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, it's. Yeah. He's self sacrificial towards her.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. So.

People have studied this and the concept of love is actually periodized sort of in human history.

Right.

As Father Andrew was mentioning, love in the ancient world was largely considered a weakness. It was like pity.

That you had some weakness or vulnerability towards someone or something. Right.

And was not. Was completely disassociated from sexuality.

No real connection with it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And was often. Was more often used.

When it was used in some kind of positive sense. It was much more often used to talk about what we would call friendship.

Than what we would call a romantic relationship.

So the next phase after that is Christian love.

This is secular folks. We'll talk about. There's Christian love, the idea what love comes to mean in Christianity in the New Testament, which is of course the New Testament is an interpretation of the Old Testament.

So I'm not saying this suddenly starts with Christianity, but this is drawn from the Hebrew scriptures as well.

But Christian love, that you should love your enemies, that you should love your neighbor, and Christian love, what differs with that? Is that Christian love? Not only is it directed. Is it to be directed toward everyone, even those who hate you, but involves taking concrete actions. It's not just a feeling. Right, right. And this, you could see this through one little bit of etymology that I'll steal from Father Andir, which is I.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Don'T own it all.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The Latin word for love is caritas.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. From which we get our modern word charity.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Charity. Right. And in fact, you'll see English translations of like St. Augustine that will talk about faith, hope and charity.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And that's not because charity has radically changed its meaning.

Right. It's that actually caring for others, doing works of love. Right. It is what Christian love meant. Right. It was a concrete thing. And this included within marriage. Right. It wasn't about having a certain feeling when you look at your wife or your husband.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. Even the modern English word love, at least historically, etymologically. Right. It actually doesn't mean any of this that we've just been talking about. It's actually related to words like libido. It doesn't come from libido, but it means. It refers to desire. Right. That's what that word. And you know, it's funny, we naturally use that word now, but the problem is we project that meaning back onto what's being talked about in these ancient contexts.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right. And you get the emergence of romantic love in the Renaissance, the high Medieval, late Medieval and Renaissance periods. Right. Where. This is where you start talking about courtly love, this kind of thing where love is sort of an affection toward an object, a feeling of reverence and awe toward an object, an appreciation of its beauty.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so you get these writings for people who are deeply in love with someone who they've maybe never met and never will.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Dante and Beatrice, even though Dante is married to someone else.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What kind of things?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What.

That's true.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. So, Right. These. These kind of things. And this is. This is where our concept of romantic love starts to emerge. Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep, Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Looking at that girl across your eighth grade class. Right. And thinking she's just the most wonderful thing you've ever seen. Right. That's. That's. This kind of love. Right. Which you got to see is greatly devalued from Christian love.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Then when we move past that, we get to this Freudian period where it becomes desire. Right, right, right. Desire for someone. I desire to have them, I desire to possess them. I desire something from them.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And then. And then this gets mixed up with the Natural, normal feelings of friendship. And then that's where you get like our modern slogan you hear from some people, love is love. It's like, well, yeah, that you are experiencing is a combination of desire and probably friendship. But that's not what love is in the scripture.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. And that's. There's an old rabbinic story, or at least I was told it's an old rabbinic story. I don't know a lot of old rabbis, but where.

A man walks into a diner and he goes up to the lunch counter and sits down, and there's a guy sitting next to him eating a fish on a plate. And he looks at him and he says, how's the fish? And the guy says, oh, I love this fish.

The second guy says, you love him. You just cooked him and cut him up and ate him.

And the point there is, this is how in the modern. Modern times, 19th, 20th century, maybe to the 21st century, all too often this is actually right. It's not just, well, if you love him, well, why don't you marry him? Right.

It's that we look at it as what he really loves is not the fish. Right. He wasn't going to put him in a bowl and take him home and feed him and care for him. Right. What he loved was how the fish made him feel, how the fish tasted.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The gratification he got from the fish as he consumed it.

And this is how we're taught to look at love. Love is about consumption. Love is about how someone or something makes us feel.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that's why, you know, the famous philosopher, when he asked, what is love, his next thought was, baby, don't hurt me.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, don't hurt me no more.

So, yeah, so this is. We have to radically shift.

We're talking about this now because, of course, Isaac is where this comes up. Isaac and Rebecca, that Isaac loved Rebecca. But as we go forward into things.

About spouses loving each other, we have to be very clear because of how misshapen these different ideas of love have been. What we really mean, and ultimately what we mean and what we will always come back to is that the love part, right, is always something concrete. It's always something you do, something you choose to do, and it's something you choose to do regardless of how you feel at that moment.

And the reason I'm making this point is that a lot of us have been taught the opposite. We've been taught that somehow if you do something but you're not feeling it, that's somehow phony.

Or Hypocritical or bad?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, I would say that when you do something good when you're not feeling it, that's actually more virtuous.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

Yes. So this is something I always. In the premarital counseling sessions, this is something I always tell people when they're getting married. Right now, my wife and I were America's sweethearts. So this doesn't apply to us.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's true.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We are just continuously, completely in love. But for most people.

You know, you have these, especially as the wedding approaches, you know.

And right after newlyweds, right. You have these very intense feelings. Right, of love. But eventually it's a few years later and your stomach's making weird noises in bed in the morning and no one's wearing any makeup and everybody's hair is sticking out in weird directions and you slept funny and there's smells.

And.

You know, it's 6:00am and you have to get up and go to work and you're not looking at your spouse and feeling that same, you know, rub the Vaseline on the lens in the old movie, right? The fuzzy, oh, right, this person's the most handsome or beautiful person I've ever seen. Right. And if that's what you think love is, then what are you going to conclude after enough days like that? Well, love's gone, so I should probably go too.

Right? And that ain't it.

That's not love. Love is when you're feeling those feelings, you show love and you do things that demonstrate your love for your spouse. And when you're not feeling it, you do the same things.

Because faithfulness and love are sort of intimately connected in that way.

And the feelings will come and come and go. So all that is to say, this is not saying Isaac felt some kind of warm feelings, right, that he, you know, wrote bad poetry for her that didn't rhyme.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Blank verse is a very respectable form of love poetry. I'm just saying.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I didn't say all poetry that doesn't rhyme is bad.

I just said kind of.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Bad poetry launched a thousand chips.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The bad poetry that you write when you're in love with somebody as a teenager usually doesn't rhyme because if it does rhyme, it sounds like you're trying to rap at them.

That's unattractive. So you try to make it poetic by not rhyming and it's just a mess. No 13 year old can write iambic pentameter, especially not when his love struck. Prove me wrong.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I did try, but that was a long time ago. And I did not keep any of those.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So you wrote bad poetry that didn't rhyme.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

See, I know.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So exhibit A. So next we get to Jacob. And Jacob has a couple of wives and a couple of concubines.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Right. I mean this is where the 12 tribes of Israel come from is these four women.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And what we see in that family is all the issues associated with polygamy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. It's not great.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

See the rivalry between Leia and Rachel.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Rivalries between the sons.

You see with. I won't get too graphic about this, but you see with Reuben.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Incest problems.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And.

All I'll say is to the modern day polygamous situations show those same exact issues. Right. Over and over again.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. This has never been done well.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. So.

We'Re going to get more into this in a bit. But to say this here.

Often folks will say, well, the Bible doesn't condemn polygamy. That's not actually true. Like I said, we'll get back to it. But even if it were, even if it were.

The scriptures can describe things.

And by the way they are described, expect you as a reader to understand and see, oh, this is not a good thing. It didn't work out well. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's never depicted as working.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And to take a lesson from that. Right, right. Without having to cudgel you over the head and say, hey, don't do this.

And especially when every time it's presented there are problems.

What was the previous time to this? The whole thing with Hagar. That didn't go well.

Right.

So that's just. And the opposite assumption often seems to be made especially by our atheist friends. Right. Our non religious friends. Is that anything the Bible describes, it's endorsing?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Well, like the Bible says this happens. So the Bible's saying that's fine. It's like what? Timeout. Right. The Bible says idolatry happened.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We literally don't treat any other book that way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. The Bible says all kinds of horrible things happen. Right. All kinds of horrible sin. Right. We see God punishing sin. Right. We see God like, you know, the flood. Right. We see God reacting to sin. So if you read that, you wouldn't walk away. If you give it an honest Reed saying, oh, this is saying all that sin was cool.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. So.

Yeah. But we'll come back to the whole polygamy issue here.

And then the last of these patriarchal marriages is not described in any great detail in the text of Genesis itself.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But flowers into something in later Jewish and Christian literature.

And that's. We're told that Joseph in Egypt marries a woman named Asenath, or Asenath, depending on where you look.

Hebrew vowels aren't written, but who is said to have been the daughter of a priest named Potiphar. Not the same one in the city that's later known as Heliopolis. That's obviously a Greek name.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. It'd be kind of deeply weird if he married the daughter of the other Potiphar. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wait, what? Right. So. But.

We'Re just sort of told that of course, he has Manasseh and Ephraim. Right.

So this creates this interesting little thing in the text where it's like, well, wait a minute, he married the daughter of a pagan priest.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Mixed marriage.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He's not an Israelite. He's worshiping the Egyptian gods. That seems a little weird.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So there's this fun text. I can't remember the date of it is. But it's just. It's certainly before Christ. Right. Within the. A couple centuries before.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It's probably.

Second century B.C.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Maybe third, but probably second.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Just titled Joseph and Azenith. You can find translations of this on the interwebs. It's not very long. You could read it all, I think less than an hour, probably.

And it's basically a romance story. Right. But it's really more, in some ways the story of how Azanuth, like, she sees Joseph and he is hot stuff. And I mean, that's what the text essentially says, you know, lo, the man fair to look upon, you know, and let's see somebody. That's just dynamic equivalence. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's how I'm trying. Yeah, yeah, there we go.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Dynamic equivalence. Yeah. And the implicit version, I must have him. Right. And. But, you know, she comes to him and he's like, no, you are a pagan. And she goes away, very sad. But eventually discovers, wait, I can become part of Israel and then we can be together. And so she does. It's the tale of her leaving idolatry and becoming part of Israel and worshiping Yahweh, the God of Israel, and they get married. So, you know, in this. So this comes from the sort of Hellenistic Jewish world, so it serves all kinds of interesting purposes in that world. Right. It's the story of a pagan becoming part of Israel and. And all that kind of stuff. But it's definitely a very different kind of character than the scriptural texts because it is. You know, she falls in love with him. Right, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And it's. It's a.

Yeah. I don't. We won't digress now and talk about how ancient romances are and are not related to the later concept of romantic love. But.

It'S sort of. The literature is sort of an attempt to write. The problem it's aimed at is this. Well, wait, Joseph the patriarch marries a pagan. Right? Right. But the recasting of that as romance.

Of essentially her conversion story, which is a supernatural conversion story, which is referenced by Christ in one of his post resurrection appearances. Go back to a previous episode to find out more about that.

Casserole is of theological importance. Right. So we can't know how much of its early popularity among Christians was because of what. Right.

Because it became. Even though it was written as a Jewish text, this text became wildly popular in early Christianity.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And is found all over the place at Christian monasteries. Presumably the monasteries didn't have it for the romantic value.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And more for the theological value. But when you think about the early church and you think about Gentiles coming to faith in Christ.

You think about some of the imagery we're going to talk about later tonight of Christ as the bridegroom.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You can see how that narrative of this woman who's coming out of paganism and becoming part of.

The household of God, how that would express a kind of Pauline theology to Gentile Christians. Right. It's sort of a very powerful narrative way.

Beyond just, you know.

Oh, Joseph is described as good looking and she's described as good looking and.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, and you know, she's from a small town and has to go back there and meets a divorced guy with a dog. And anyway, that's not actually in the story. That's every Hallmark movie. You can go watch those. It's a whole channel of them 24 7.

So.

Those are these patriarchal stories. And as we said at the beginning of that, those marriages are sort of highlighted in the Orthodox wedding service.

So as we go forward.

In scripture, there is more about marriage. And obviously different genres of biblical literature are going to talk about this in different ways. One of the themes that you find, especially in wisdom literature, but also in the prophets, is the theme of.

Finding love, finding joy with the wife of your youth.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

So Proverbs 5:18 says very bluntly, let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth.

Which is pretty straightforward. And the idea of the wife of your youth is that this is that person who you got hitched to at age 13.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Possibly not having ever met her, your family arranged it.

Who knows what she looked like and whether that was appealing to you. Who knows what her voice sounded like? Who knows if she honked when she laughed. Right. We don't know. But you were married to her.

And now she is your wife. Many men in that kind of situation, in that kind of society, as you might imagine, once they were older, once they had found some measure of success in life, once they had more resources, would be tempted to go and divorce.

That wife who they maybe hadn't wanted to marry in the first place because they figured they could do better, go marry someone younger, someone who they found more attractive, someone who. Whatever. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And, you know, that occasionally happens today, too, but.

That'S even without our arranged marriages.

And so the idea of finding joy, finding love with the wife of your youth.

Is, again.

A mode of faithfulness. Right. That faithfulness is not just right at one level. We've talked a lot on the show, especially in recent episodes, about faithfulness in terms of keeping the commandments of God and obedience. But faithfulness also has to do with the roles that we have, the places that we occupy.

In our communities, in our families. Right. In our. In our vocations. Right. We have these places we occupy, these roles that we play in them. And those roles and those places we occupy have certain expectations and responsibilities and duties.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And a right way for them to be carried out in terms of bearing the image of God in the world. And a big part of faithfulness is not just not lying, not stealing, not murdering anybody. Right. All those are bad. But a big part of it is faithfully living out those roles.

Even though many of those roles, more now than ever before, but still now, many of those roles are not of our choosing.

We don't get to choose who our parents are going to be, but by virtue of them being our parents, we have certain responsibilities to them that we have to exercise faithfully.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think this is one of the things that's really hard for, at least within our culture, for people to accept, because there's so much cultural emphasis on the idea of you can grow up to be whatever you want to be. You know, whatever it might. Whatever it might be. I didn't choose you. It's really remarkable how ingrained that idea is of sort of limitlessness.

And yet that's really not a healthy way to be.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And a refusal of responsibility unless we chose it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I can only be responsible for something if I voluntarily choose to be.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And that's just not so. I mean, in ancient cultures, you got to choose basically. None of it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You didn't get to choose your spouse, whether you'd be able to have kids or not. What you do for a living, you are apprenticed off to somebody or you just grew up farming like 18 generations of your parents and grandparents had.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No one says, so. You know, why don't you have a conversation with your guidance counselor about what you'd like to major in, and then we'll think about some placement for you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You ate what food you could get and you'd hoped you could get enough of it to live. Right. You did get to choose whether you're going to get sick. I mean, you didn't choose any of it. Right? Now we have so much more choice. And possibly having all of those choices has made us.

Feel like all the places we don't choose are shackles.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But they were never shackles. They were opportunities to display faithfulness.

So in this theme about the wife of your youth, the prophet Malachi, which, depending on what version of the Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, you're looking at, might be the last book, or it might not.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Malachi says a little more in that context and says some interesting things that we're going to come back to a couple times tonight.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So God is taking them to task. So it starts off with this, Malachi is a prophet.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So that goes without saying.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, right, exactly. Yeah, that's true. It's pretty much how it goes. Prophets don't show up and say, good job, everybody.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, good job, good job.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So Malachi 2, starting with verse 13, going through 15. And this second thing you do, you cover the Lord's altar with tears, with weeping and groaning, because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. But you say, why does he not? Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant, did he not make them one with a portion of the spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking godly offspring? So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So the Israelites are sort of getting angry with God, as was their want, Right. Starting in the wilderness with Moses. Let's kill Moses and go back to Egypt. We had it better there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But this is happening again and they're getting angry.

Right? Because, you know, they're going and making the sacrifices.

That are commanded and at least going through those motions, but God is not hearing their prayers and giving them the blessings and the abundance and the victory and all of the things that they think God owes them in return.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They think it's God's duty to provide those things to them. Right. And they're saying, why isn't God faithful to his covenant? And God here says to them, well, how about the wife of your youth? That was a covenant.

You had a duty there.

Right. Were you faithful to that? How can you then come to God and demand that he be faithful.

When you're faithless?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And recall way, you know, a few books behind where God said, if you do these things, then you will be blessed.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

Yeah. Not if you do the sacrifices correctly. You will be blessed, not pagans.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This is not magic.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And so as I mentioned, we're going to come back to another aspect of that in Malachi a little later.

So.

Getting into the New Testament.

A couple places where marriage is discussed sort of famously.

In the Pastoral Epistles 1 and 2, Timothy and Titus, St. Paul lays out.

The sort of requirements for who's a good candidate to be a bishop or a presbyter or a deacon.

And one of the elements of that that's repeated and if you translate it very literally from the Greek, they have to be a one woman man.

It's often translated to English as husband of one wife.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And this is not primarily about polygamy. Polygamy was not being widely practiced amongst St. Paul's Gentile converts to Christianity.

This is mostly about divorce and remarriage.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. One woman man ever. Not one woman at a time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. Yes. This is consecutively, not just simultaneously.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

Neither digamy nor bigamy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So.

Yeah. So this is more connected to what we were just talking about, about the wife of your youth.

Right. And that's why this is a mark of character for one of these men who's being considered for a church office. Right. Is that he has done this. Right. He has been faithful to that wife of his youth.

And if a person isn't faithful in executing those duties, because it also talks about how he conducts his household with his children, if he hasn't been faithful in those roles for whatever reason, doesn't matter why. Right. If he hasn't been able to. Right. Then we're not going to give him this additional role within the church community to which he probably will also not be able to be faithful if he hasn't been able to be faithful in these other ways.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So that's why it's a mark here. This also communicates to us that it is the Norm for church leaders to be married.

This is communicated a bunch of other places in a bunch of other ways. Even St. Paul, who isn't. Right, talks about how he would have the right to take a wife and children with him on his journeys the way St. Peter and the other apostles did.

Right. So St. Peter had a wife and children. He had a mother in law who Jesus healed.

So this was the norm. And it's what you would expect. Right. Because Christianity at this point is basically a Judaism. In Judaism, the norm was for people to be married. Right. And that remained.

A strong sort of norm. And the reason I'm emphasizing this so much is that.

I think this is particularly common in the modern West. I think this is an interpretive thing in the modern west, although it's kind of all around in the west, but.

This idea. And you can find some proof texts in the New Testament. You're hard pressed in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament you can find some proof texts to try to argue that celibacy is somehow superior to marriage.

In some way.

Those are proof texts. They're taken out of context. It's not true. But at the very least. Right. Even if you want to give those texts some weight as proof texts on that side, there's a whole lot of weight on the other side. Right. Of marriage being the norm, including for apostles. Yeah, Right. Including for prophets in the Old Testament. Right. That this is. This is broadly the norm. And so we would understand that there are people with particular callings. Right. St. John the Forerunner had a very particular calling. Right. St. Paul had a particular calling. And that's St. Paul's argument about why he doesn't have a wife and children. He says, I have this particular calling. And to exercise and be faithful to this particular calling from God, it's better that I not have a wife and children that I bring with me.

So it's about a particular calling. And this is important all around when looking at the saints in the church. Right. So when we look at Saint Simeon stylites, that story is not supposed to say to you, hey, if you were really holy, you'd go live on a pillar.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's not what that's saying. Right. He had a very peculiar, in all senses of the word calling from God that he was faithful to.

If you're listening to this, you're listening to it on the Internet. So I could say, assuredly, you do not have that calling to be a pillar saint. Right. Have WI fi up there, or you're being wildly unfaithful. To it, at least if you do.

But I'm pretty sure you don't. Anybody listening to this does not have that particular calling. You have a calling from God to do something. Right. But for 99% of the world, probably more than that. But that calling involves family life.

Right? Family life.

Not everyone has to get married. Not everyone. Not you should feel bad about yourself if you're not Right. But the sort of married world, the world of family life, the world of the extended household, is what.

The vast majority of people in the world today and in the history of the world have been called to by God. And then there are exceptional cases.

Where God calls someone to something else.

So then we mentioned earlier the place where Christ talks about marriage.

In a significant way in St. Matthew's gospel and goes back to Genesis. So we could take a look at that. It's in response to an issue about divorce.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So this is Matthew 19, 3:12. And I'm just going to read it quickly because we probably are familiar with this passage. And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by saying, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? He answered, have you not read that? He who created them from the beginning, made them male and female, and said, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. They said to him, why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away? He said to them, because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. But from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery. The disciples said to him, if such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry. But he said to them, not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men. And there are eunuchs who have been, who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. So a few comments on that.

So notice when Christ describes marriage and it sort of doesn't matter. Right. So the truths that he conveys in his answer are not dependent on the question that led him to say them. Right. What do I mean by that. Right. It's not as if what he says.

When he quotes Genesis and what he says about marriage and God's original intent in marriage. It's not that. That only applies to questions about divorce. So if you ask a question about anything other than divorce, well, this verse is irrelevant. Right. As some would have it as silly as I just made that sound.

But in addressing this question about divorce.

Christ describes again the original intent of marriage, which is that the two become one flesh. And if God has made them one flesh, so God is here, the agent who joins them together. The joining together in one flesh is a divine action.

Right. What we would call grace.

Man cannot separate. Right. Let not man separate. So this is a human divorce, according to Christ's answer here is a human.

Literally trying to defeat the purpose of God, trying to pull apart what God has joined together.

So that's condemning divorce in the strongest.

Terms.

And also describing marriage as. Right. Because he starts with made them male and female. Right. So that's what marriage is.

At least the marriage that's being talked about here, the marriage that the Bible talks about, that's what it is. Right. And only one of each. Right. The two become one flesh. Right. And that's what Christ who says original tender marriage is. So of course their question is, well, then why did Moses say you could give her, Send her away? Now, that's not actually what Moses said. We won't go into it right now, but if you go and look it up.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Sneaky, sneaky.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. What Moses said was, if you're going to throw your wife out, you have to give her a certificate of divorce. That's not the same thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. It's a limitation on freewheeling, throwing women out.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He's telling men they can't just abandon their wives and children.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

If you're going to leave your family, you have to give her a certificate of divorce. That was not saying, it's fine, don't worry about it. Abandoning your wife and kids.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Cool.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, Right. That Torah never said that at all.

So they've turned it into this sort of out. Right.

And so Christ basically says Moses knew what you people are like. He said, because of your hardness of heart. Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And so he knew some of you were going to abandon your wives and kids. And so he said, well, if you're going to do that, you have to at least do this.

Right. At least give them a paper so they could move on with their life and not be stuck in this limbo. Right. Wondering where you went.

And so he says, look, you're committing adultery, right? Why? Because God has joined the two of you together.

And it's not just humans shouldn't pull that apart. It's humans can't pull that apart. That's why it's adultery.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So then the other part of this that often gets misinterpreted is.

When the disciples.

Then say, oh, if this is the case, it's better not to marry. And people will often interpret Jesus answer to them as saying, yeah, you're right.

Yeah, you guys should all become eunuchs for the kingdom of God. Everyone should be celibate. Which is not at all what he's saying.

That's not at all what he's saying.

Because what the disciples are literally asking is, wait a minute, if I can't divorce my wife, if I can't abandon my wife and children, I don't want to get married.

That's the question they're asking or the statement they're making.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay. Christ is not endorsing that.

So Christ's answer amounts to essentially, if that's how you feel, then yes, you should stay celibate.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

If it's your attitude, then then please don't yourself on some. On. On a woman.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, you are bet. Because you are better off not getting married than getting married and committing adultery.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Or getting married and abandoning your wife and children. Yes, it is better for you not to be married in that case.

Right.

So.

That said, last note here in the first half, that's getting back to as I said we would, polygamy. Right.

So as I mentioned earlier, there is a place where polygamy is condemned. It's especially not clear in English translations.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because of the way they translate it. And you have to do a little bit of comparative Hebrew idiom to get what's going on. But in Leviticus 18:18.

Right. It talks about that there's a command that says that you're not to marry.

A woman.

Take a woman as a wife, as a rival to her sister.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Which people take to say, okay, you're not allowed to marry.

Sisters.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Don't do what Jacob did.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Don't marry two sisters. Like polygamy is. Okay, as long as they're not related. Right.

Or at least not that closely related.

But if you take that phrase of sort of marrying sister to sister, Right.

And you look at other similar Hebrew idioms where there's like brother to brother or man to man. Right. The way that idiom is used in the Hebrew Bible, you find a whole Bunch of examples where, for example, the army will be arrayed man to man.

And the idea of arraying them man to man or gathering them man to man means you're gathering up a whole bunch of them.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, it's a series.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Like a whole group. Right, yeah. Man to man is like sequence or series. Yeah. And so the idea here at the core, really, if you understand the Hebrew idiom, is.

Don'T keep getting married. Right. You marry one woman, don't marry a series of women. Right, right. Consecutively or simultaneously.

And of course, we've already pointed out every example of polygamy in the Old Testament goes badly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And that is only intensified when we're talking about the kings. Deuteronomy 17, 14, 20, in the commandments regarding the Kings, explicitly says the king is not to multiply wives to himself.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Which you shouldn't read as say, well, the king's not allowed to be a polygamist, but everyone else is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. One time when I pointed this out, I had someone say, oh, no, no, no, no. They were allowed to add wives, just not multiply them.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They're allowed to have a few, just not a ton.

And I was like, what? But anyway.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wow.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You can't get that from the original languages, we'll put it that way. That distinction between add and multiply.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, there is this other religion which allows you to have up to four.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There is.

Provided you treat them all the same.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, exactly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Which we really need a good rabbinical commentary on the Quran. Right. Because I think the first thing a rabbi would do with that would be, you will never treat them all the same and therefore you can only have one. Right. Like, we'll turn that right back around. But we don't have that. So.

I wonder if actually there is such a thing. Write in evil period or something. That would be fascinating. Yeah. This email you can send me if you listener what you know of a rabbinical commentary on the Quran from any era, you can email me about it and I will read that email because I would be super curious about that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right. Lordofspaceandfaith.com everybody.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, hate mail goes to Father Andrew. But that one you can send to me.

But. Right. So.

The idea here, the king is very explicitly right not to. Not to do this. And in addition to the.

Patriarchal stories we talked about where polygamy goes bad, in addition to King David, King Solomon, where polygamy goes bad.

Even if you go back to the first example of polygamy in the scriptures, in the book of Genesis, It's Lamech who stands at the culmination of Cain's line at the end of Genesis 4.

Who sings the song to his two wives about how he's like, way better than God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, the first polygamist.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. That's the first. He took to himself two wives. Right. We're not to think that part was okay and everything else he did was bad. That's described there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And there's a deliberate contrast being made in those genealogies which. Right. We don't.

Maybe notice because we're not huge into genealogies. But the culmination of Cain's line is Lamech with his two wives. The culmination of Seth's line is Noah with his one wife.

And his sons who each had one wife.

Which is specified a wife. Right. So this is a very deliberate. Right. The rise of polygamy.

Is presented in the book of Genesis as a sign of falling away from the original intent that Christ points to in Genesis.

And so Christianity has never practiced polygamy.

There were isolated Jewish sects that practiced it up until the 9th and 10th century, but mainstream Judaism left it alive, left it behind a long, long time ago, long before that.

So, yeah, there's not a good case for polygamy out of.

Out of the Bible. And pointing to examples of polygamy is not a good way to justify your favorite form of sexual immorality.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Indeed.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

On that note.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right, so we're going to go ahead and take our first break. We'll be right back.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-23-7-2346. That's 855-AF-ADIO.

Ancient Faith Publishing is pleased to announce a new release that is part history, part theology, and part devotional. The Story of A History and Theology of Christ explores the complete life and teachings of our Lord from before his conception in Mary's womb until his ascension. Revered 20th century Egyptian elder and scholar Matthew the Poor wrote many volumes on.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The subject of Christ's significance, life and.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Teachings which translator James Helmi has distilled into one highly readable book that will make a valuable addition to every Christian's library. The Story of Jesus is now available in paperback and [e-mail] that's store.ancientfaith.com we're back now with the Lord of Spirits with Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and Father Stephen Deyoung. If you have a question, call now at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thanks, voice from Steve. It's the second half of the Lord of Spirits podcast and we're talking about marriage, the sacrament of marriage, the mystery of marriage. This is not a call in show where you can get marital counseling.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'll try. I'll give it a shot.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's just not really a good idea. It's just not a good idea.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, I try to steal the Lowe's bit.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's right. There is. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We have a show like that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Sort of. Yeah, yeah. But yes, call in 855-Araidio. We're discussing marriage, especially in the Bible. And we just talked about how saying you can have polygamy based on stuff the Bible says is just not a thing. Like literally there's no point where polygamy comes up where God says, and this worked out really well. Like it's just not.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Or you should do this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Actual commandments against it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. So have to. This time it's personal.

So we're moving from first half tonight was about marriage.

Second half here we're going to talk about weddings.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There we go. So, yes, the actual moment of making this thing come to be.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. The sort of sacramental thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so.

We'Re going to start by going back to our friend, the prophet Malachi.

And one particular verse out of that section we read before. This is Malachi 2, verse 15.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. This is cool, by the way. And I was, you know, when we were doing our briefing a couple days ago, I commented the father that, you know, I've read the whole Bible over my lifetime, a couple, you know, a few times, whatever. I just didn't remember this verse. You know, I think by the time you get to Malachi, you've got a little bit of Old Testament fatigue, you know.

But this is cool. So listen to this everybody. Malachi 2:15. Did he not make them one with a portion of the spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking godly offspring? So guard yourselves in your spirit and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

This is. And the contents of this are assumed in what we already saw Christ say.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We talked about God joining them together. So we have. It's God actively making them one. So two becoming one flesh is not just a euphemistic description of sexuality.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No. It's God joining them together as one.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. It's a divine action. But this adds this Element of a portion of the spirit being breathed into the union by God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So the two become one flesh and then that one flesh is made alive by the spirit of God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. I mean, and you know, see the spirit episode, among other things. But. But yeah, I mean, this is cool, the idea that the Holy Spirit comes into a portion of the spirit, is brought into the union of the husband and the wife.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. And makes the marriage alive. This is deliberately parallel to Adam's creation. Right. Adam is formed from the dust of the earth, and then the spirit is breathed into him and he becomes alive.

Right. So.

The wedding. Right. The marriage, the sacrament, when God does this, when God joins two people together.

And they receive the spirit. Right. To make that marriage alive.

That is an event. It's a moment. But the reality of it, the life of that marriage then extends through the rest of their lives.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So this is always something. Again, I'm laying out all my premarital counseling tool bag tricks here, but.

A lot of times when people are getting married, you know, they will spend days and days and days and hours and hours and hours stressfully working on all the details of the wedding.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And as someone who had a wedding, it's all kind of a blur.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's over really fast. And then you're married for the rest of your lives, hopefully.

And the amount of time we spend preparing to spend decades together, Lord willing, is a lot less than the amount of time we spend preparing for one afternoon.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And making sure the invitations are on the right color parchment paper.

Tasting cakes. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, I do like to taste cakes. So.

Yeah. Wedding plan. It's interesting to think about what we Often people hire wedding planners and so forth.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. You'd be better off hiring a financial planner to help you lay out your finances going into the future, that would be much more helpful.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Than having that day be quote, unquote perfect that you'll barely remember because you were so fatigued and relieved at the same time. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Old man yells at Clouds live on Ancient Faith Radio tonight.

So.

The question then is, so where. If you want a proof text, then if you're looking for proof text, if you want a proof text, that marriage is a sacrament, not a sacrament falsely so called. Sorry, John Calvin, that proof text is Malachi 215 that we read. Right. That in the marriage God makes them, one gives a portion of the spirit in their union. That's not a human activity, that's not a civil function. That's not a contract.

Right. That's a sacrament.

And this is part of why marriage is the way it is in the Orthodox Church. There's some folks listening. I know. Who aren't Orthodox, may not. And even Orthodox people who've never been to an Orthodox wedding. Right. Because maybe they came into the Orthodox Church and just haven't had the opportunity to see one. One of the big things you notice in an Orthodox wedding is that we don't do vows.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The people both get asked right before the service starts if they're there of their own free will.

And then after that, they don't say a thing.

They don't do. They're not doing something.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. The wedding happens to them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. They are married. It's a passive. Right. And they are married to each other. Right. So it's God's action. So in the same way that in baptism, we have water, in Chrismation, we have miron.

Oil, in the Eucharist, we have bread and wine, in the sacrament of marriage, we have a man and a woman. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're the ones being changed into another mode, so to speak.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. So that's. And that's what Malachi is pretty clearly expressing in a very quick way. Right. In one verse. So if we understand then it to be this sacrament. Right. Like, we know who in the Old Testament was doing the sacrifices.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And we've talked about that. We know who's doing this. So who was performing weddings. Right. And what even was a wedding, Right. In the ancient world and in the Israelite and Jewish world.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And weirdly, you could not. I'm just going to say this at the outset, you could not hire your own Elvis to do your wedding.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. They would have asked you who.

But yeah, you couldn't get ordained online either.

But so.

In most cases, the earliest phase. Right. So we're talking about the patriarchal period. Right. We're talking about it was the father of the extended family.

Patriarch, head of the household. Right. And we talked about that's because that was the person who was invested with the priesthood. That was the person who was doing the sacrifices at the time. Right, right. For the family. That was the family. They were the ones who were effectively. Right. The officiant of marriages within the household.

Later that moved to.

The presbyters, the elders of the clans and tribes in Israel who were sort of the fathers of those extended units. And that's why marriage law was handled as everything else was. I think we've talked about this on the show before. You see these references in the Old Testament to people going to the city gates. Right. And to See those who sit at the city gates, those were the elders of that city. They would sit at the gates of the city and they would be there and they would perform.

These kind of functions of religious law, which included marriage law. Right. So if you think about the book of Ruth, when Boaz is going to act as kinsman, redeemer for youth, for Ruth.

He goes to those elders, right, to say, here's who I am, here's who, here's who Ruth is. I'm the relative, I'm going to marry her. Right. He goes to the city gates to do that because that's where these elders are.

So they sort of become the ones in charge of these things.

While we're here, we need to.

Make a note on bride prices. Yes, totally. Here's another totally non controversial element of the Bible to comment on. So in the Old Testament, you see this in many places that there was a bride price. And this continued into the New Testament period. This continued in a lot of cultures for a long time where.

The.

Groom to be and, or his parents and family, an extended family would give gifts, sometimes money, sometimes.

You know, sheep, cattle, goats. Right. Flocks and herds. Right. However the, however the economy functioned at the particular time.

Commodities would give those to the bride's family in return for the bride being released from that family and brought into his family through marriage.

And.

Sometimes in the really cool cases, rather than just giving gifts, you would perform some great heroic deeds.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like going and killing and circumcising a few hundred philistines.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Or obtaining a sumeral from the crown of Morgoth. Just putting that out there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, these one podcast people, you're feeding them, you're throwing them raw meat, man. I know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. But I mean, you know, Jacob kind of does this, right? He has to spend seven years and then seven more years working, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Because he doesn't have any money. So he trades labor, basically.

Yeah, yeah.

So this is often shorthanded by people. Right. Modern people will look at this and say, oh look, this guy's selling his daughter.

Right. He's, he's buying a wife. He's, you know, and so this woman is just being treated like a commodity to be bought and sold. She's not being treated as a human, she's being treated like a slave. Right.

All of this is sort of.

Modern and silly and you're retrojecting things. Most of all, you're retrojecting modern economics into the ancient world. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're not capitalists.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They weren't capitalists. There's no such thing as commodities. People aren't buying and selling commodities in ancient Israel. Right.

The idea here is that when you're dealing with this, the actual kind of economics of the time, which is almost entirely agrarian, when we're talking about ancient Israel and Judah.

That your, your household, the members of your household, be they your children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, Right. Everybody in the big extended family, all of those people are all essentially units of labor, meaning they're all working, they're all doing different tasks. Right. So the 13 year old girl who you're about to marry off is not sitting around her room reading Tiger Beat, Right. Listening to boy bands.

Right. And you're gonna go and trade her for some goats. Right. It's, it's. She's out there tending animals, helping her mother, mending clothing, helping feed the workers. Right. She's part of the household. It has this role that she's playing that keeps the whole household functioning.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And when you're doing subsistence farming, functioning means alive.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, you lose somebody, that could be bad, that's bad for the family.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. And so losing this daughter, having his daughter leave this household and go to this other household. Right.

The bride price is essentially paying restitution.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I am doing something negative. This person by taking his daughter away from him.

This is going to negatively affect his household. And so I'm going to pay restitution to him to make it right for what I'm doing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There was an example of this in my own life. Oh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You'Re going to tell or are you just going to mention that?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. When my wife and I were engaged.

I went to go and get her and we were going to drive back to, at the time, Pennsylvania. I went to get her in California, get her from the home of her father and her mother.

She was my father in law's only daughter.

And I was taking her away from him. She had a dog.

Small Boston terrier named Bean.

And this dog had become the apple of my father in law's eye.

He loved this dog more than anything. She was my wife's dog at the time, fiance's dog. I could not take this man's daughter and his dog.

I could not do this to him. No country song would suffice to express the pain I would have inflicted.

And so we left the dog.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I bet you've gotten a lot of mileage out of that in the years that have followed.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So this is the idea. The idea is that taking this person out of their household, you're kind of doing an injury.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, yeah. So you need to make up for that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So there's restitution. That has to be. That has to be provided.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, like, and you know, the very famous, like Proverbs 31 bit praising, you know, a good woman largely praises her for her industriousness.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. For her quality as a unit of labor. Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Talking about how she's sewing and making these things and selling them in the marketplace and da da, da, da, da, da.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so this is not going to be an etymology thing. This is more lexicography, because this is really just about definitions.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But do another song. But nothing rhymes with lexicography.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's true. Now I'm thinking about. No, never mind.

Yeah, so bride price, that's what we were just talking about. This is distinct from a couple of English words that everyone's probably familiar with. Well, the first one, more familiar, which is dowry. And then there's another English word, dower.

So a dowry is a price that's paid to the groom along with the wife. Basically, here she is and here's some money or here's land or here's whatever goods.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It functions within political marriages as almost a kind of like, well, there's a whole package of things I'm going to be sending you, including this woman.

And then a dower is not exactly the opposite.

A dower is a gift that the groom gives to his wife that she gets control over property, money, whatever, mainly so that if he should die, that she's not left with nothing. Right. These things are not the same thing as the bride price that we're talking about. And they're, relatively speaking, kind of later developments.

Not always. But that's a different kind of thing than this sort of restitution concept that we were just talking about.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. We're not going to keep going and get to dowager and all that anyway.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, that would be fun.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It'd be fun for you, sir.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That would be a different podcast.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Fun for you.

So.

So we need to kind of address, because we're talking about, remember we're talking about weddings now. We're talking about marriage as a sacrament. One thing that's brought up sometimes as an objection.

Sometimes by good natured folks, even folks in the church who I think haven't fully thought it through is you'll hear people say, well.

You know, weddings weren't really done in churches until like later centuries.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And it seems like they were just kind of still doing Roman civil weddings.

Or something. They'll say something like that. Right, right. You're laughing because you remember the briefing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I know, I know.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

When we talked about this.

So there, right off the jump, there's some obvious problems with this because, like, in the ancient world, what's a civil wedding? What's a secular wedding? Because what's a secular anything in the ancient world?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, civil society is not secular, it's just not a thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Everything involves gods.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Gods all over the place, Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There's not just sort of like, we have this, we have that, or.

Like to think we have that, where we have these sort of neutral, secular, material, mathematical things over here and then these supernatural things over there. If we believe they exist at all, they're over there somewhere. Right. Like separate.

But not only did everyone. Except that they were all there, they were all together all the time in the ancient world. Right. So.

That'S not a distinction you can even make in order to sort of make that argument. But so then why weren't weddings done in churches?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What were they like and what were they doing? Well, so.

We'Ll start with an example of a Jewish wedding in the first century. We've got one in the Bible, in St. John's Gospel, the wedding at Cana. Right.

And we see that there are multiple days of feasting. Right. There's a wedding feast that's thrown, guests are invited. Right. And this, again, this is not a quote unquote, secular feast, whatever that would mean.

This is a religious feast. Right. Some of the food there is probably from sacrificial animals. Right.

So this is, this is this celebration of marriage, because again, we've seen from Malachi, we've seen from the way Christ read Genesis, that they understand that in the marriage God is doing something and that's what's being celebrated. Right. In the feast. But to put a fine point on it, within that feast, the sort of key moment of the marriage is when the bride and the groom would go into the bridal chamber and consummate the marriage. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Without that, it's not a marriage.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And that's the moment when they're married.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So, and then after that, and we're going to be semi euphemistic about this again, but after that, the bridegroom would typically emerge from the bridal chamber and display, usually on a cloth, the evidence of the bride's virginity up to that point.

And again, somewhat euphemistically, if you listen closely to some of the liturgical hymns in Holy Week and Pascha, you will hear references to Christ emerging from the bridal chamber and to emblems.

Of.

His victory that are connected to this sort of imagery. But so this is why you wouldn't have a wedding in the temple or in a synagogue, because it was not appropriate to consummate the marriage there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And, you know, we may recall, of course, St. Paul in First Corinthians.

You know, aiming big criticism at people who involve themselves in pagan, you know, religious rituals because a significant element of them is sexual in the temple. And so, like, this is a pagan thing to do. You don't do sex in Christian and Jewish religious contexts.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In that building.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

If you're reading First Corinthians in the original languages. So it's not the bowlerized English. He's telling them they can't do that in the church in Corinth either.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There are very clearly some who were wanting to. Yeah, right. So right now there's nothing icky, Right. About sexuality. There's nothing icky about that. It's just there's appropriate and inappropriate places for things. Right, right. St. Paul says the marriage bed is holy and undefiled. Right.

But it's not the altar in the temple either. Right.

So that's sort of what's going on in a Jewish wedding. Now, if we're going to talk about.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Roman weddings, this thing that supposedly Christians were doing for centuries until they decided.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

To turn into it. So if you're going to say that they weren't having some kind of quote unquote Christian wedding until, what, the fourth century, what do people say, fourth century, fifth century?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think that's usually. I mean, I'm not a liturgical history scholar.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Somewhere in there where they say, oh, this is when they start being Christian weddings, you're kind of implying that this was going on even among Christians until the.

4Th and 5th centuries, 6th century, whatever you want to say. And I think we're going to see as we talk about what a Roman wedding looked like, and repeat of parental advisory here.

Why that dog don't hunt. Right.

So the normal procedure for a Roman wedding is first, the betrothal agreement is made with the bride's father.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay. Still. Still G rated.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. To. To establish. So that agreement is made, bride price paid. Right. All that. That agreement is made. Now, most weddings were done unless there was some major reason in the month of June.

Because the month of June, people still get married in June. At the modern day, June is the month dedicated to Juno, who is the Roman goddess associated with Hera.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Who is the goddess of.

Marriage among her other things.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. I mean, if you aim your wedding at June, the reason why there is this tradition is it's literally a pagan Roman tradition.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

We may have just stopped 100 Baptist weddings this June just by pointing that out.

So other.

Gods and goddesses involved in this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, man, this is where it gets weird.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Everybody carries. Will make a little appearance, but of course, Venus, who you might expect.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep, yep. Okay. Venus. Venus, if you will.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And then the God Hymen.

Who was never God of weddings.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

God named Hyman, everybody, who is the.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

God of weddings and who was specifically associated with the consummation of the wedding.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

By the way, this is your reminder. We have to throw these out once in a while. The Julian calendar is pagan.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. We'll continue.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, so.

Now some more gods come into the picture because every Roman household. Right. We're talking about the big extended family household headed by the pater familias. Right. Had Larry's, who are not like Larry Sanders or Larry David, spelled a little differently, and Darrell's. Yes. And their other brother Darrells. No. So.

The larys are a term for the household gods.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So these are the local deities that you keep in your house that are.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, well. And this would be an accumulation.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. So it would be from the family's history, where the family was originally from, the gods of that place, the gods of the place where they currently live, Gods, particularly associated with events in the family's past and with particular family members, sort of would all be collected together and there would be images of them at the hearth. Yeah, right. Which was generally in the central to the Roman home. And that's where people would gather and that's where worship would take place within. Right. The Roman household of those idols.

So these household gods, though, as we've mentioned before on the show about pagan gods, were kind of possessive. Right, right. So it wasn't just like, oh, these are the gods we worship. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like there's a reciprocal relationship, like, this.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Is the denomination we belong to. This was. Right. These are our gods and we are their people. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so. Right. So this is sort of a pagan.

Further thought down the line of the bride price. Right. You're not only depriving the human father of his daughter. Right. But you're taking a person away from these gods.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So you're going to have to figure out what to do.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And this person is then going to belong to the gods of this other pagan household.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. So you got to do something to kind of make the gods you Know the bride's family's gods. Okay. With the transfer.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And make no mistake, they firmly believed that these gods, who we would say are demons, would kill the person potentially.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Or inflict sterility on them or any number of other horrible things.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because they weren't. These gods weren't your pals. Right.

So there were two elements to this. So first, leading up to the time of the wedding, they'd offer a series of sacrifices to those gods to kind of butter them up. Yeah, Right. Make sure they're in a good mood going into it. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And then when the time came for the wedding at night, the bridegroom would come to the house.

And fake kidnap the wife.

And the bride would kick and scream.

And yell about how she didn't want to go. The idea being that this would trick the household gods into thinking she's not leaving of her own free will.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Don't blame her. She's being stolen.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right. She's not leaving you guys on purpose. She's getting drug away kicking and screaming. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Amazing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So they wouldn't get mad. Okay. So now.

There would be a procession from the bride's house back to the groom's house.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Which is a kind of like a. I don't know, you know, it's a space between. Right, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so this was considered a dangerous time for the bride.

Because she is now not under the protection and ownership of those gods.

And she is not yet part of the groom's household and those gods.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so she's in this no God's land.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So she is literally what ancient people would call an atheist.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. She has no gods right now, which means she's totally open to spiritual attack during this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so those in the procession would carry these horns that were filled with oil and used as torches that were dedicated to the God carries.

Which were believed to protect her on the trip.

And they would sing a series of hymns to the God Hymen called the Hymena.

During this journey, when they got to the groom's house, there was a ceremony with oil being rubbed on the threshold, which was to sort of signify her now becoming part of the groom's household and coming under the protection of those pagan gods. And then there was a bed or a couch called a lectus on which the marriage would be consummated.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's how pagan Romans got married.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So when people say that Christians were just doing Roman marriages.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Christians weren't doing that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. No.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I guarantee you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So many steps along the way. Completely not. Not okay for Christians.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Not actual Christians. Right.

So, you know, what were they doing? So the question is it really, you know, oh, they were just doing Roman weddings until all of a sudden the church decided it was a sacrament in a later century.

This is basically an argument from silence. We're pretty sure they weren't doing this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, we don't know exactly what they.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Were, but we don't know exactly what they were doing until that later point. Now, again, the central moment here where the wedding is, it's when it's consummated, which you're not going to do in a church. Right, Right.

But we know, for example. Right. Not just a question. I mean, obviously, when Christians are a minority in the Roman Empire, a lot of them probably weren't even Roman citizens and stuff. Right. So Jewish Christians would have been doing Jewish weddings, for example. Right.

And there was probably some form of something. Right. That was being done. But we know that, for example, you don't even have to wait for Theodosius to become Emperor.

Saint Constantine.

And if it gives you heebie jeebies, be calling him Saint Constantine. Wait until we get to the episode about the coronation of an emperor in this sacrament series. You're gonna be really excited.

So.

When St. Constantine converted.

One of the biggest evidences of the reality of his conversion to Christianity is the fact that he ended all of the pagan sacrifices being done by the military and being done in public by himself or by his agents, and he replaced all of those sacrifices with Christian priests celebrating the Eucharist.

Before going into battle, before, you know, in civil functions. This is during Constantine's lifetime.

So it is reasonable to believe that he did not leave Roman marriage untouched.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Right. Now, of course, there were still pagans out there who are probably still doing pagan weddings. Right.

But Christians. There's.

Begar's belief.

That Christians were having pagan weddings.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And so then, I mean, again, we can kind of speculate a little bit about why they eventually do show up in church, why you do start getting church weddings, you know.

And clearly the sense, at least from the wedding service that we have, is that.

The key moment is no longer the consummation, it's that God is joining these people together.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right. And it appears that.

In the earliest evidence we have that the Eucharist was involved.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Which would explain it being in a church.

And fits with this idea of replacing other sacrificial pagan rites with the sacrifice of the Eucharist, getting rid of those and bringing in the Eucharist as a way that it transitioned to a church in between, I would imagine we would see the same thing that we see in the rest of Christian worship, which is that they were doing an adapted form of the Jewish.

Traditional wedding.

You know, with. With Christian elements. Right. Christian scripture readings and that kind of thing.

So. But really, it's an argument from silence, but we can go from the patterns that we see in Christian worship elsewhere in the restructuring of Roman society to make a pretty solid guess. Right. Of at least roughly, what was going on. Right.

And. And that's furthered when you look at, for example, how St. Paul approaches these things. So a central element of what St. Paul is doing in all of his epistles is he's trying to reconstruct gentile identity.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And what do I mean by that? Well, yeah, gentile identity from any given nation was deeply steep. You couldn't separate paganism out from it. Right, right. We have a modern secular concept of like, ethnicity.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And religions.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And religions that are separate things that doesn't exist in the ancient world. So what it meant to be a Greek was not just to have, like, grown up in Hellas. Right. Or to have your people be from there for many generations. What it meant to be a Greek was also to worship the Greek gods. Right. And to participate in the ritual life of Greece that surrounded those gods, the public festivals. Right. All of those things. That's what it meant to be Greek. Right. So what does it mean to be a Greek Christian?

Now, we take that for granted, but for St. Paul, that wasn't something you could take for granted. Right. And so you can understand why in the early Church, you get, like, the opponents of St. Paul and Galatians who are saying, well.

Okay, you can't be pagans anymore.

So why don't you be Jews?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Because you can't be a Greek anymore. You have to have some culture. You have to be something.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. So you need to get circumcised, you need to keep Torah, you need to do all these things. You need to be Jewish. Right. You can't be Greeks anymore because Greek being Greek is being a pagan. Right.

And St. Paul is saying, no, you're not to become Jews because you're not Jews.

You're going to remain Greeks. But what it means to be Greek is going to change.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so a Greek Christian identity is forged. And that takes a couple centuries. St. Paul starts it, but you read all the problems he's having, for example, in first and Second Corinthians that we already referred To. Right.

Difficult process.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And even while the concept and the way of life gets worked out, the terminology largely isn't kept even early on. By the time you get to the Cappadocians and so forth. Greek, in terms of something other than language, Greek is used to refer to pagans. And if you're Christian, you're a Roman.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right? Greeks are the ones still following that way of life.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. I mean, the word Greek in various ways gets revived again in the 1819th century for other reasons. But yeah, but yeah, that identification of Greek with pagan holds on a long time even while they're kind of developing a Greek Christian life, just calling it something different.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. And so St. Paul is going to affirm, right. So he's got those folks on the one side who want people to become Jewish. On the other side he's got like the Jewish zealot tradition.

Right. That wants to overthrow societal structures within. Within Roman life. Right. And St. Paul is going to want to keep those social structures. That's the part of the gentile identity that he can keep. Right. Sort of, you know, families. Right. Marriage in general. Right. We don't need to get rid of marriage in general. Right.

All of these relations, all these structures we can keep, but they need to be re infused. Paganism needs to be drawn out. They need to be re infused with Christ. Right. And so that's part of this transformation. And as a kind of aside.

When folks, one of many things I'm a pessimist about is there being an American Orthodox Church anytime soon.

And the big reason is that we still have to do precisely this.

Not figure out what it means to be American and Christian.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because there's an American Christianity and the more American it gets, the less it looks like Christianity, frankly. But.

Figuring out what it means to be American and Orthodox Christian.

We can't just take for granted that that's just an easy sub. In fact, the fact that America is deeply steeped in another form of Christianity, in sort of Puritan, Calvinist, Protestant Christianity sometimes makes it harder for us to make the distinctions that we need to make in order to form an American Orthodox identity. You know, when, if, if America was, you know, a Muslim country or a Hindu country, right. When we looked at cultural institutions, it would be a little easier for us to spot in the Hinduism case, the paganism, in the Muslim case, the Islamic parts. But when it's another form of Christianity, the distinctions get more subtle and more tricky and that identity could be a little harder, little harder to form.

How does this apply to Weddings. Well.

Any priests listening know how this applies to weddings? Because there is a constant tension of. This is the traditional Orthodox wedding service versus here's the couple getting married, and here are the American elements that they want to incorporate into that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. This is what we want for our wedding, Father.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And it's American stuff. It's the music that people have in American weddings. It's the, you know, all these things. And we're still doing that work of sifting out. I have no doubt that if there's an America 200 years from now. Not sure. But if there is, and Orthodoxy is still here on these shores and thriving, that there will be little things in the Orthodox wedding service that are a little different from an Orthodox wedding service in other countries that will have incorporated certain bits and pieces. Right. That have baptized American cultural things. Right.

But actually doing that now on the ground is very. Gets very difficult.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. In. In hashing those things out.

So a couple of. A couple of major.

Ideas. Right. I've talked several times on the show about how practices generate ideas, not vice versa. Right. The changes in practice regarding Christian marriage that happen.

For Gentile Christians. Right. This massive shift from the pagan concepts surrounding marriage and weddings to the Christian concepts surrounding marriage and weddings. Two major cultural shifts that come out of this. I'm not saying they're the only two, but these are two big ones.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. And these are things I think, in some ways we take for granted on some levels.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Now, that are new from this dynamic of gentiles becoming Christians.

What? The first one is male virginity.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Which in the ancient world, like, it was just not a thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. No concept. Right. So it's built into the Roman wedding service that the bride is expected to be a virgin.

Right. And in most ancient cultures, her being found to not be one.

Biologically. Right. Meant it was an invalid marriage.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And she might face dire consequences. But the Romans, for example, expected that men were not.

Right. Not just. There was no expectation that a man would not have already been sexually active, but it was expected he would have been considered a weirdo.

Not ready to be married yet.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

It's interesting how that has kind of crept back into our culture.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

And so the idea of male virginity as any kind of value is completely new. But we can understand how that would come about, because if a bride has to be a virgin, and if a male, a husband is expected not to be, that means you're going to have to have a class of.

Sorry to say it, but we're talking about ancient Rome Women and young boys who are being used for sexual gratification by men.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. They're just. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because they're not. They're not finding that sexual gratification with the woman they're going to marry because she has to be a virgin. So there have to be these other people who men are using sexually. Right. And so Christianity obviously opposes that whole system of men seeking sexual gratification.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, the whole. The whole thing. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so comes and seeks to eliminate.

That class of people, not by doing something horrible to them, but by making it so that they don't have to do that. Right.

And therefore the expectation is, since they're not going to be engaging in that activity, that the husband is also going to have maintained their virginity.

So that's a major shift.

That's a kind of apocalypse shift. The other epochal shift that people completely take for granted today especially.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This one in particular is the idea of consent.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. That especially that women can say no.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. That women have a right of consent to sexual activity. So in Roman. In Roman culture, and I won't get into this in terms of the language, but I'll just say this is reflected in classical Latin.

Sexuality.

A man gratifying himself sexually was considered kind of like blowing your nose.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Just sort of a bodily going to the bathroom.

You went and found a receptacle.

Right. And. And it didn't really matter. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There wasn't this deep spiritual meaning or.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And willing, unwilling. Right.

The concept of rape at that time was basically only involved other people's wives and daughters.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. It was kind of a property crime, so to speak.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Whereas Christianity, because of the very beginnings of monasticism.

Comes and says women have the right to dedicate themselves to God and remain virgins and not get married. It was not get married at first. Right.

And if you read the early martyrologies of women saints in the early church, a huge proportion of them end up getting killed because they refuse to marry the pagan their father is trying to marry them off to.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, one after another, like almost all the early female margins martyrs are.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This way, often by their own father.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep, yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. So Christianity says this woman has the right to refuse to get married. Right. And then that grows into. Right, obviously the idea of sexual consent.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And. And, you know, and St. Paul mentions this, and I can't remember which one of his epistles off the top of my head now, but.

He talks about married people consenting with one another, you know, to set aside marital relations for.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The purpose of prayer.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. All right, well, that said, we're going to take our second and final break, and we'll be right back with the third half of the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Father Andrew Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-ADIO.

New from Ancient Faith Publishing. Psalms of Salvation. The strength of Abba Moses. Freedom, power, strength. These he would gain, then lose. Released from slavery and no longer frightened by his master's whip, Moses uses his new freedom and great physical strength to rob and destroy. Consumed by his own desires and unable to escape the reminders of his past, Moses must learn of the true source of freedom and power.

Meet St. Moses the Strong, also known as St. Moses the Black, as he surpasses his physical strength with spiritual discipline, obtaining the crown that thieves can neither harm nor steal.

The strength of Abba Moses, a graphic novel by Gabriel Wilson is now a [e-mail] faith.com. that's store.ancient faith.com. we're back now with the Lord of Spirits with Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung. If you have a question, call now at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that was a very terrible dramatic commercial. I don't think I'd heard that one before. It's cool. It's good. By the way, that graphic novel, my kids love it. Sands of Salvation, we got a pre release copy and they're super into it, so. Yeah. Yeah. Well, welcome back, everybody. It's the third half of the Lord of Spirits podcast. We're talking about the holy mystery of marriage in this particular episode. And we just finished up in the second half, we talked about weddings in particular, and we got to hear all about Roman weddings, among other things, which was pretty weird and exciting. But that's, that's, that's how we do.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Words you never thought you'd hear on Ancient Faith Radio live.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's true. But we did give a little parental advisory at the beginning.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We warned you.

You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.

So you mentioned the mystery of matrimony. And so here in the third half, we're talking about the mystery.

And so this is.

We'Re talking about the mystery. This, this sort of does two things. On one hand, this is sort of the spiritual reality that undergirds everything we've talked about tonight.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep, yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right on the other hand.

This also represents sort of the fulfillment of everything that begins with the creation of Adam and Eve and is tied to what we mentioned back at the very beginning of the sort of special relationship that marriage has with the original purpose. Right. For which. For which humanity was created.

And so.

It uses the word mystery. Right. But a sort of key verse from St. Paul, when he's talking about marriage in Ephesians 5.

He kind of says this very plainly.

Right. He says in Ephesians 5,32, this mystery is profound. And I am saying that it refers to Christ in the church.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And this is why the authority does just kind of smack you over the head with it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right? Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Here's what I'm getting at. Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And this is part of the passage that's read one of the passages read at the wedding service in the Orthodox church.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Most people miss this part because before this you get the verse where he says that wives should obey their husbands. And then everyone shifts nervously in their seats.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And they don't hear anything else after that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It gets really awkward.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And then it says that the husbands loved your wives as Christ loved the church. I mean, this has always led me, like I have this little fantasy about it's got to be the right couple, but you know, going out to preach the wedding sermon.

And just making it a two word wedding sermon. You know, just turn to the bride and say submit and turn to the groom and say die.

Always wanted to do that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And that's. And you could probably get away with it just because nobody's listening to what you say in the wedding sermon anyway, staring at the couple, you know what I mean? Like, oh, I should try it. You know, I remember when there was type.

So.

But yeah, the irony there, of course, is that when St. Paul said it, the wives obey. Your husband's part was non controversial and they didn't have any choice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He was talking to them about how they should do it, not telling them to do it, they were forced to do it. He was just that like how whereas the original hearers would have found love your wife so much you're willing to die for her. Again, we talked about love. We talked about the wife of your youth. That would have been the crazy part.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Crazy, radical, revolutionary. Submit to each other. Wait a minute.

What? Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But what St. Paul is doing here when he talks about how marriage is the mystery of Christ in the church is he's drawing, he's sort of tapping a vein, right? He's drawing on A tradition that runs through the Old Testament and then into the Gospels. Right. Of course, the Gospels are written after St. Paul wrote that, but obviously Christ said the things beforehand.

So he's drawing on this and kind of bringing it together. So we're going to. Kind of. Most of the rest of this third half is going to be us sort of walking through that. Right. And there are, there are. In the Old Testament, there are obvious examples of this. Probably the most well known obvious one is actually the Song of Songs or the Song of Solomon.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And you get the. Which. Which obviously is this fairly sensual and fairly graphic, depending on how bowlized your English version is.

Sorry. About. About husband and wife.

And you get these debates, right, because you'll read.

Commentary, right, that this is God in Israel, this is Christ in the church. Especially in Russian commentaries and of course.

More modern commentaries are like, no, this is about sex. Right. Because everything is. If you're a modern person.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And politics. And politics, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The answer to that though, really is porque no los dos, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's about all those things, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because as St. Paul says, right. Marriage is the mystery of. Of Christ and the church. There's some imagery like this even earlier on, right. So the Lord your God, right, Yahweh, your God is a jealous God.

Right. That you're not going to have any other gods. That jealousy there is. That's husband imagery.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. And here's my chance to do another. A little bit of lexicography.

Jealousy. This is one of my little rants, actually. Jealousy.

Is the feeling that you have when you think you're going to lose something that belongs to you. So it's appropriate for husbands and wives to be jealous of one another in that sense. Obviously, if it becomes an obsession, you have a problem. But envy is when you want something that is not yours. That's the difference between the two. I don't know why, but whatever. Jealousy has come to mean both things here in late modern, whatever English we're speaking. But yeah, so there you go, everybody.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I don't know that I would say jealousy is appropriate. Well, I mean, it's the appropriate word to use.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, it's. Right. It's not appropriate in the sense that you should.

Like when God says he's a jealous God, it's not saying that God is sitting there freaking out that he's going to lose something that belongs to him.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. It's a benefit to a jealous husband.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. It's saying that he. That you belong to him. That's really what's being said about it, you know, not anybody else.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm just saying, as. As Jacques Lacan pointed out. Oh. Being jealous is pathological, even if your wife is actually cheating on you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wow. Is this where you saying something nice about Jacques Lacan?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, it's. The reason it's pathological is that your jealousy is not based on the fact that she is cheating on you, because she might not be.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's just. It's somewhere inside yourself.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wow.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

That was your Lacanian moment for probably this decade. Most of us.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay. Thank God.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So. But this. This imagery of. Of the marriage between God and Israel becomes particularly pronounced, although not in a very positive way, in the prophets.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, yeah, right, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And there are some really graphic passages in the prophets that use this imagery. I couldn't talk Father Andrew into reading any of them.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Let's just say that Ezekiel chapter 16.

Uses the word whore or whoring or whorings 17 times.

17 times to refer to Israel's behavior with regards to God.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right?

Yes. And that's the general cast of these. Right. Is that it's Israel as the unfaithful spouse. Right? Right. And God is the faithful husband.

And so you get. Like in Jeremiah 2. 2.

Right. Yahweh says, I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown, Sort of like how things started. And then chapter three, you get how things are going. Right. And not good.

And Ezekiel 16, as Father Andrew mentioned, the whole book of Hosea. Right. The prophet Hosea is commanded to go and marry a prostitute.

To sort of enact in front of the people. Right. This. This idea. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You got a feel for Hosea.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And so.

Why. Why is this imagery particularly appropriate? Right. Of God as spouse to his people. Right. It's particularly appropriate because it's an image of theosis.

This is the most intimate human union.

And in this human union, the. The two become one flesh.

The spirit. Right. Makes that alive, livens and permeates that it is not identical to theosis. Right. But this is a. One of the best possible images.

Of theosis.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And. And I think it's. It's worth pointing out. So when St. Paul says in Ephesians 5, this is a great mystery, but I speak of Christ in the church.

He's not saying that Christ and the church is like human marriage. He's saying that human marriage is like Christ and the church. Like, it goes the other way. The Christ and the church is the.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Original.

Because that's what humanity Was created for.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Was theosis.

And so.

This shows us then that with. With marriage being.

Right, this. This.

Connection to. To that mystery, this is giving us.

Right. Human marriage is as a means of. Of theosis. But so because of this overarching idea.

Very often, and sometimes we. I think we underestimate how often and how much the work of Christ. Right. Like there is no. Here's what we need to do. This is how I will sell books at Lifeway.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, no.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The marital theory of atonement.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, there you go.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There's gold in them thar hills. Anyway.

Do it under a pen name. Anyway.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We'Ll know it's you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. No, but the work of Christ in salvation is described in terms of a wedding, in terms of a marriage. Right.

Right. In terms of a courtship, in terms of a consummation, in terms of the feast. This is one of the fundamental ways in which it is described. There is.

A little bit.

Of.

Second Temple Jewish literature related to this, which may kind of be in your Bible, depending on who you are.

Because it's in 4th Ezra.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

4Th Ezra is in an appendix in the Slavonic Bible. Right. We won't go into it now, but, you know, I'll say, well, it's part of the Slavonic Old Testament canon. And sometimes people say, well, it's in an appendix. And then I say, well, what exactly does that mean? And they don't know. So.

But it's in there. If you have the Slavonic Bible, St. Jerome did translate it into Latin as second Esdras.

It's not in the Roman Catholic canon, but it's floating around there in the Vulgate.

Probably in an appendix.

But in it, Ezra has a series of prophetic visions. And one of these is the vision of the bridegroom.

And.

There is hymnography of Pascha in the Orthodox church that is drawn directly from this, which is pretty. I'm pretty sure why it's in an appendix in the Slavonic Bible.

Because of its connection to that hymnography. So in this vision of the bridegroom, the bridegroom comes to the threshold of the bridal chamber and then dies.

Before he's able to consummate the marriage. And so then there's this great mourning and wailing. How horrible this is. Right.

But then the bridegroom is discovered alive.

And the consummation happens and there's all this rejoicing. Now there's a lot of debate about when for Ezra was written. Exactly.

Most folks would peg it as a Jewish, a non Christian Jewish text from the late first century ad.

And so because of that.

Critical scholars who don't want to see, who either aren't treating it as scripture because it's not in their Old Testament canon, or.

Because they're ruling out any kind of Christian seeming interpretation will argue that this is about the Temple.

That the bridegroom dying on the threshold is the temple being destroyed in Jerusalem, and that the sort of resurrection of the bridegroom is expressing some confidence that in the future the temple will be rebuilt. And they'll argue that Ezra is sort of comparing that to. In Ezra's own day. Right. Ezra is one of the returning Judahites from exile, you know, rebuilding. Well, building the second Temple. Right. Building the, rebuilding the temple after it was destroyed by the Babylonians.

So but we don't have to say they're wrong to take a kind of obvious Christian interpretation of this.

Because of course, Christ said.

About himself, St. John emphasizes about himself, destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days. Right, right, yeah. So again, if the question is, is this about the death and resurrection of Christ or is this about the destruction and rebuilding of the temple, you could say Porchos.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, exactly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So just some places then, where this bridegroom imagery shows up. I mean, there's bunches of it, but just some significant ones.

In Christ's statement that's recorded in Matthew 9:5, 9, 15, Mark 2:19 and 20, and Luke 5:34 and 35, he talks about how the friends of the bridegroom do not fast while the bridegroom is present. Right. While they're, you know, but then when the bridegroom is gone, then they fast.

Matthew 25, 1:10 is the parable of the ten virgins. Right. Who are waiting for the bridegroom.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Also prominent in Holy week.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

John 3:29.

Refers to St. John talking about St. John the forerunner. Christ calls him the friend of the bridegroom.

Right. Who rejoices at the bridegroom's voice.

So we have all of that through Christ's ministry, this presentation of Christ as the bridegroom preparing for the wedding.

Then very significantly, I know I've commented on this before on the show and even recently, when you get into the story of Christ's death, his crucifixion, in St. John's gospel in particular, he starts pulling in all of this vocabulary and imagery from Genesis.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So this is the Adam and his not rib.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

Yeah. In John 19:31, 37.

This is where. Right. The. This is great. And Holy Friday. Christ has been Crucified. The next day is the Sabbath. That Sabbath is a high day. Right. It's the Passover. And so they can't leave him hanging on the cross overnight.

And so as they're getting close to sunset, the call goes out, hey, go and break their legs. So they'll die. Right. And then once they're dead, we can take them down before sunset. They come to Christ, and he is already dead.

And so the soldier pierces his side with a spear, and blood and water flow from it. When it says his side is pierced, his side is open. The Greek word there for side is plevron, which is the same word used for Adam's side in the Septuagint.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep, yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And remember, we're told that Adam goes into a deathlike sleep.

Christ has died, his side is opened. Out of his side comes blood and water, which. Pick your church, Father. Any church, Father. Right. Will point out to you that water is related to baptism and blood is related to the Eucharist.

Which constitute the church.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So the church then is likened to woman, to Eve coming from Adam's side.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

His bride emerges from his side.

And then when we get to the end of the New Testament In Revelation 19, verses 6 through 9, we find that sort of the consummation of all things is the great wedding feast of the Lamb.

The great wedding feast of Christ.

So this. This isn't just an image that gets picked up a few times. This is, hey, far more than the Day of Atonement or my dissertation about the Day of Atonement. But this imagery is used more concerning Christ's life, death, resurrection and return in the New Testament than the Day of Atonement is.

By a lot. Passover beats this, but this beats Day of Atonement by a lot.

So when we're talking about this as a mystery, when we're talking about mysteries in general, the idea of mystery is connected to the idea of participation.

Right. You don't, like, look at a mystery. I know we're used to mystery, like glass onion or something. Right. Like, who done it? Right. Like you're trying to figure out. You're trying to solve the puzzle. Right. And come to an answer. Right. But that's not the way mystery is used here. That's not the way mystery was used religiously in the ancient world, where mystery is sort of like, oh, this is a weird, cryptic puzzle that I have to decode.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. No, it's an initiation. It's a participation in something. It's touching divinity, you know?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so this is yet another reason. Right. We gave you the proof text in the second half. But this is the core reason why. And this really starts in Genesis and ends in Revelation. The core reason why marriage is a sacrament is that marriage is a participation in this larger reality of Christ's marriage with the church, this cosmic reality of Christ's work, and therefore is a means and a path of theosis, of becoming like God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So to wrap up.

I kind of joked a little bit earlier that this is not a marital counseling session. And it's not. But.

Naturally, one might say then, well, then what's the point of any of this?

What's the application?

And.

I think that, I mean, I've been married myself now for almost 20 years. A little bit later this year be 20 years for me and my wife. And I think she would definitely tell you that I'm not an expert at marriage.

And so I'm not going to say that I am. And I also am not a trained marriage counselor or anything like that. But I have talked to a lot of people about marriage, certainly in my work as a priest, and I've thought about marriage. And I've been married for a while, while. And one of the things that I've noticed is that it's really easy to get kind of lost in the weeds.

To get lost in whatever the particular problem of the moment is, and then often to.

Make that problem grow so big in our regard that it can destroy the marriage or damage it.

And so the question is at least partly, well, how do you prevent that? Or how do you get out of that?

And I think that the things that we've talked about are one of the ways of dealing with that. What do I mean by that? Well, if we have a vision for where we're going and what the whole purpose of all of it is, then you gain perspective.

Right? You gain perspective that whatever it is that you're fighting about.

Is less important than the marriage.

And that the marriage is not an end to itself. This is a really important point. This is where we've kind of arrived at, at the end of this episode. But I just want to emphasize this. The marriage is not an end to itself. The marriage is a means for salvation, a means of theosis, a means of becoming one with God.

And we've talked about what theos entails many times. But just to reiterate, the way that you participate in God, the way that you enter into the mysteries of the church, is by doing the works of God. You do the things that he does. And so then you're participating in his life and you become more and more like him. Well, marriage is the place that most of us do that not all of us, but the vast majority of us are called to do it in that way. It doesn't mean that those who aren't called that it's some kind of lesser call or.

Broken. If you're not, you know, if this is not your call. No, but we're talking about marriage in this particular case, so this is what we're talking about.

We are given our spouses so that we may serve them as Christ served the church, so that we can love them as Christ loved the church. In doing that, then we are participating in the life of God.

That's what it is. And you can do that no matter how you feel. Having been married for almost 20 years, I can tell you that not every single day do I wake up and feel head over heels about my wife. And I'm sure she does, not about me.

But we can still do the things for each other that are serving each other and sacrificing for one another.

I was really struck, as I said, by that verse from Malachi, chapter two. I think it's verse 15.

Yeah, Malachi 2:15, about a portion of the spirit coming into the union of the husband and the wife. And I alluded earlier to our episode on spirits.

If you didn't listen to that one very briefly. What is a spirit? A spirit is a.

Sort of ordering force. I don't know if that's the right word, but an influencing.

Sort of pulling of the reins, as it were. You know, an actual being that's doing that. And so affecting, you know, a spirit can affect. Like we each have our own spirits that. That control our bodies, that live within our bodies and move them. And there's an animating spirit of groups of people, right.

And so what's being said here in Malachi 215 is that the animating spirit of a wedding, of a marriage that is done by God is the Holy Spirit himself.

And so that's one of the reasons that we point to this being truly a sacrament, because that's one of the things that sacraments are, is the Holy Spirit animating people for a particular purpose, for a particular vocation. And so.

The part of the cure, or I should say the cure, Right. There's a lot of different ways that we get there. But the cure for a diseased marriage and the.

Nourishment for a marriage that is just beginning and for a marriage that is continuing is to seek out the Holy Spirit to earnestly be faithful in the Christian life. And so if spouses are doing that, then the Holy Spirit is animating their marriage.

That's what's going on. And that's a powerful thing that I think takes some of the.

It sort of deflates whatever it is that's darkening our marriages, right? When we're animated by demonic forces, if we realize that and reorient ourselves and recommit ourselves to living a life of faithfulness in Christ, then we become animated in our marriages by the Holy Spirit. And knowing that that's what makes the marriage what it is takes some of the pressure off of, I have to make this perfect, you know, or are off of the idea. I have this. We have this fatal flaw. We're just not meant for each other or whatever it might be. You know, if.

Both people are seeking to be faithful to the leading of the Holy Spirit by doing the things that we know we're supposed to be doing as Christians following the commandments.

Then the Holy Spirit is animating our marriages. Even if only one person is doing that, we know from what scripture says that that actually sanctifies the other person, that there is an effect on them as well, right? That one person in a marriage who lives a godly life is affecting the marriage, because that's how it works. And so with this very full vision of what marriage is and what it's for and how God brings it into being and maintains it and deepens and so forth.

I hope that we can be inspired in our own marriages or inspired towards marriage if we're not yet married, or at least inspired to pray for those who are married, whether we are married or not, whether we're called to be married or not.

So that we can.

Become that image of Christ in his church, as St. Paul says in Ephesians chapter 5, so that our marriages become evangelistic, so that our marriages become salvific, not just for the two people in it, and not just for their children, although certainly for all of them, but for all those who connect to them. One of the things that's prayed in the marriage service in the Orthodox Church is that the couple would shine like stars. And if you've listened to this podcast, you know exactly what that means. If you haven't listened to any of our episodes where we talk about that, that means that they shine with an angelic light, that they are shining with the light of God that shines through them to the whole world. To the whole world, Father.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So building off of what Father Andrew said about the Cure Disintegration is the best album ever.

Also.

Friday Love. I've taken a pretty good shot at getting myself cancelled a couple times with this. Maybe third time will be the charm.

Here I go criticizing the nuclear family again.

So when in doing this episode about the sacrament of marriage.

And I didn't bring this up during the episode because of course we're talking about what we're talking about, but when I did this episode.

I was thinking a lot about.

All of the people who had listened to it, who might.

Hear it differently than we wanted. What do I mean by that?

There's a lot of people out there, and we've got a lot of listeners who aren't married. And that's not necessarily by direct choice.

People who want to be married but haven't found someone where it works out.

People who have been widowed, who experienced being one flesh with someone and now feel torn apart having lost that person.

Any number of other people, people who've been through divorces, people who've been through other situations, and they often.

Can be in orthodox discussions of marriage.

Get kind of left in this liminal space between marriage and monasticism because, you know, they're not at the moment in a marriage, but neither are they monastics. And.

Not only them, but, you know, couples who haven't been able to have children can feel marginalized Orthodox Christian communities, because sometimes assumptions are made about them.

And in all of these things.

We'Ve lost sight of what family really is and the relationship between marriage and family. Because what we've had sold to us as a family and marriage is the nuclear family.

Husband, wife, kits. This, we're told, is the building block of all society. So if you don't fit into that, you're destroying society somehow, or you're a problem for society.

And the problem, as I've said before on the show, is that that idea of a family is just too small.

One of the major tensions on marriages in this country now is, is the fact that people have been told that this one other human is supposed to fulfill all of their needs.

This one other person is supposed to be able to satisfy them in all ways.

And guess what? There is no human who can do that for any other human.

It's never happened. And if that's what you're looking for in marriage, your marriage is going to fall apart.

And your life is going to fall apart. Not only that, but then you get on one side. As I mentioned, anybody who isn't able to fit into that mold.

Not by choice.

Is.

Sort of left feeling like, well, I don't have that one other person. So now I will always be alone, isolated and empty.

And so it is. It's a destructive pattern to even have in our minds.

The reality is that family.

Is really structured around the idea, or it was in the ancient world and for most of human history and still in a lot of places today, around a big extended family, a big household.

A household. And in that household, there were any number of people. They're all related to each other, they're all family, but they all have different roles, and they all have different things they're doing as part of that household that make that household run and make that family work and help fulfill each other's needs and support each other, protect each other, defend each other.

And what marriage was was a person being brought into a household.

A person coming into a household, being made part of a family.

This is something going back to Joseph and Asenath. This is something that has happened to everyone who becomes a Christian. Everyone who comes into the church.

Is, in a sense, having a wedding.

With Christ. They are being brought into the church. As St. Paul says over and over again, we are brought into the household of God.

We use the term brothers and sisters very loosely, but it was meant very seriously by the first Christians. When you read the Book of Acts, when it refers to Christians in the Christian community, they're just called the brethren, the siblings, the brothers and sisters in this place, the family in this place. And that was extreme in the Roman world, because in the Roman world, you had deep obligations, duties, responsibilities to your family members based on your role in the family.

And they understood that Christians, when they called someone brother, when they called someone sister, when they said they were family, that they were extending those obligations to all of these people, accepting these obligations on themselves, for all of these people who were not related to them.

For all of these people from all over with all different personalities, all different interests, right? They were now calling them family.

That meant they'd be willing to fight, to protect them. It meant they were going to meet their needs, they were going to care for them, they were going to support them.

And so I made a reference to this, at least obliquely, earlier in the episode. But what we're talking about, when we talk about the world of the church, in terms of parishes.

Monasteries are a different thing. We'll do an episode soon. You guys may think, hey, we're six episodes into this Sacrament series. They're almost done. We're not almost done. We're going to keep going for a while. We're going to talk about monasticism, and that's a different thing. But when we talk about the world of your parish churches, right, we're talking about the world of marriage because we're talking about the household of God that is in the world.

So even if you're not a married person.

You'Re still part of this household.

The children of the church may not be your biological children, but you're their aunts and uncles.

You'Re the grandparents.

And it's only when we really realize what it means that all of us have been brought into the household of God and that each of our parishes is a family.

That will really understand what the church as a community is supposed to be. That includes the fact that every family has the crazy cousins.

Has the uncle with weird boomer political opinions that he won't shut up about, Right? As the rebellious teenagers, our church community will too, Right?

But in a family, we still love those people.

Right? We may laugh a little at some of their quirks, right? But we love each other.

And so there's a way of understanding marriage and the world of marriage and the world of family and the household of God that doesn't exclude anyone. It's the exact opposite. It includes them. It gives people who don't have a family a family. People who don't have friends, friends.

People who are alienated from society, a society to be a part of. And with that comes roles and responsibilities to which they're called to be faithful. And in being faithful to them, that's how we all work out our salvation together.

So those are my thoughts. Amen.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, that is our show for today. Thank you very much, everyone, for listening. If you didn't give us a call live, we'd still like to hear from you. You can email us at Lord of sports [e-mail] send Father Stephen that rabbinic commentary on the Quran. You can message us at our Facebook page, or you can leave us a [e-mail] LordOfSpirits and join us for our.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Live broadcast on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of the month at 7pm Eastern, 4pm Pacific. And if you love whole bean coffee, Rootless Coffee in Flint, Michigan has what you're looking for.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

If you're on Facebook, you can like our page. You can join our discussion group, leave reviews and ratings everywhere, but most importantly, share this show with a friend who's going to benefit from it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And finally, be sure to go to ancientfaith.com support and help make sure we and lots of other AFR podcasters stay on the air. I recommend the Danhausen Blend, the Dark Roast, and the Twin Peaks Inspired Blend.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thank you, good night and God bless you all.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You've been listening to the Lord of Spirits with Orthodox Christian priests, Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung, a listener supported presentation of Ancient Faith Radio and I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders, and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and Blessing. Revelation, chapter 5, verses 11 through 12.