Marriage.

[good samaritan]

I have seen many people who are dependent on government services and cannot legally marry without those benefits being forfeited. I sympathize for those circumstances, but I often wonder what has brought them into such a circumstance. I believe this is a difficult subject of whether or not we should validate our marriage with the laws of the land. I am of the pursuasion that although marriages are not made valid by the government we should still recieve marital recognition from the government. It reminds me of Abraham lying to the Egyptions and Philistines about Sarai for fear of what they might do to him.

I still am open minded on this subject because I know people personally who are in a covenant relationship, but cannot go through state process in making it legally recognized because of the loss of much needed medical ins.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by good samaritan

I have seen many people who are dependent on government services and cannot legally marry without those benefits being forfeited. I sympathize for those circumstances, but I often wonder what has brought them into such a circumstance. I believe this is a difficult subject of whether or not we should validate our marriage with the laws of the land. I am of the pursuasion that although marriages are not made valid by the government we should still recieve marital recognition from the government. It reminds me of Abraham lying to the Egyptions and Philistines about Sarai for fear of what they might do to him.

I still am open minded on this subject because I know people personally who are in a covenant relationship, but cannot go through state process in making it legally recognized because of the loss of much needed medical ins.

If a couple has all necessary powers of attorney, wills, and cohabitation agreements in place, the only things a "civil marriage" can offer is the ability to file taxes jointly as married for tax benefits, the right to Social Security benefits upon a spouse's death, and a free name change.

One thing that a civil marriage does is it binds you legally in a manner that should the marriage fail, you have to go before the civil courts to divorce. And most divorce law isn't biblical anymore seeing that divorce is granted on a "no fault" basis and assets are divided equally, with child support rendered according to income and custody determined by statute, regardless as to who was at fault. In addition, Paul admonished against going before unbelieving courts:

1 Corinthians 6:1-8 King James Version (KJV)
1 Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints?
2 Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?
3 Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?
4 If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.
5 I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren?
6 But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers.
7 Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?
8 Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren.

Paul said that it would be better to suffer being defrauded, or ripped off, than to go before the unbelieving courts of this world to settle our disputes. In fact, for old world groups like the Quakers, refusal to be subject to civil authority is considered a part of one's Christian testimony.

Ultimately, I think it is up to individual couples to decide what works for them in relation to what their church teaches. The civil marriage system is there to participate in if a couple wishes. But for many couples (for reasons such as what you mentioned) it would be far more of a liability than a benefit. If these couples enter a covenant commitment and wear wedding bands to publically affirm that they are in union with another, I don't judge.

[n david]

Originally Posted by Aquila

If a couple has all necessary powers of attorney, wills, and cohabitation agreements in place, the only things a "civil marriage" can offer is the ability to file taxes jointly as married for tax benefits, the right to Social Security benefits upon a spouse's death, and a free name change.

One thing that a civil marriage does is it binds you legally in a manner that should the marriage fail, you have to go before the civil courts to divorce. Paul admonished against going before unbelieving courts:

1 Corinthians 6:1-8 King James Version (KJV)
1 Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints?
2 Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?
3 Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?
4 If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.
5 I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren?
6 But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers.
7 Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?
8 Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren.

Paul said that it would be better to suffer being defrauded, or ripped off, than to go before the unbelieving courts of this world to settle our disputes. In fact, for old world groups like the Quakers, refusal to be subject to civil authority is considered a part of one's Christian testimony.

Ultimately, I think it is up to individual couples to decide what works for them. The civil marriage system is there to participate in if a couple wishes. But for many couples it would be far more of a liability than a benefit. If these couples enter a covenant commitment and wear wedding bands to publically affirm that they are in union with another, I don't judge.

I believe you're taking what Paul wrote completely out of context. He was speaking of lawsuits, not divorce.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by n david

I believe you're taking what Paul wrote completely out of context. He was speaking of lawsuits, not divorce.

You're right.

In Paul's day, among the Jews a divorce was typically a "writ of divorcement", or "get". It was a written decree written and issued by the husband terminating the marriage. It was often reviewed by a rabbi prior to being delivered to the wife. No government courts were necessary. Disputes relating to the separation were handled by the synagogue, not the Roman courts.

In the early Christian church, marriage and divorce laws primarily applied to those who were official Roman citizens. This citizenship was either granted according to birth or upon purchase. The majority of people under Rome's authority were not classified as official citizens, and so Roman courts felt no need to even involve themselves in their marriages or divorces. So, the average marriage was established by a private contract between families or individual couples. It was also terminated by private decree in accordance to local family traditions.

So essentially, for the most party, marriages were a private contract, agreement, or arrangement between families or individuals.

Today, since the government took over marriage and states have abolished common law marriage laws in all but a handful of states, marriage is now a "civil contract" with the government. And termination of the contract essentially becomes a lawsuit to be settled in a court of law in accordance to civil statute.

So, while divorce wasn't similar to a lawsuit in Paul's day, it is today.

[Aquila]

In the early church marriages were also established by couples who privately committed to one another, even if alone behind a barn. These couples didn't go to the church to have their union established, churches only blessed marriages that couples established. After marriage was declared a "sacrament" a priest was required to officiate. All marriages established privately by couples were then deemed lawful in the church, but were labeled "illicit marriages", seeing they were entered into outside of the church's authority.

After the Protestant Reformation, Protestant churches increasingly divested themselves from having authority over marriage and began recognizing marriages through common law, cohabitation and repute. Common law evolved into tort and civil laws and so secular government authorities began claiming more legal power over marriage.

In the American colonies and on the frontier common law marriage was rather common. Church weddings were also common. Marriages were recorded in family Bibles. Soon, Bibles started to be printed with marriage certificates and family trees. Yep, that's why so many Bibles come with those things! It's an early American marriage tradition. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln didn't have marriage licenses, their marriages were just recorded in their family Bibles.

After the Emancipation states began requiring licenses to keep mixed couples from marrying. You see, they'd deny the license to interracial couples, thereby keeping them from marrying. More and more states began requiring the licensing and civil marriage laws as we know them began to take shape. Mixed couples didn't get their right to a license until the 1960's.

[Aquila]

I was just surfing for a few minutes on this topic and I found this interesting article from WorldNetDaily:

Stay single, young man!
http://www.wnd.com/2005/04/29779/
Vox Day

Marriage, as conceived by God, is a good and fruitful thing. Marriage, as conceived by the state, is an evil man-trap designed to deprive men of their property and their children.


For as the Ohio State Bar Association helpfully explains, the marriage license is:

… a legal contract. There are three parties to that contract. 1.You; 2. Your husband or wife, as the case may be; and 3. the State of Ohio.

This contract grants the third party jurisdiction over all the property owned by the first two, as well as anything produced by the other parties, including children. And it is this marriage license which gives the state legal power to dictate who gets what in the case of a divorce.


The explosion of divorce in the latter half of the 20th century and the commonplace abuse of men in the family “courts” (which are actually fraudulent executive-branch entities that operate in total violation of the constitutional law’s separation of powers) is bad enough. But since feminists have discovered how the power of government can be used to forcibly transform civil society to their liking, they have been emboldened to make even more creative use of the state’s power over marriage.

In Spain, for example, a law is being passed to force men to do more housework. Since the vast majority of Spanish men – 81 percent – are traditionalists who believe that women with school-age children should stay at home and not work full-time jobs, Spanish feminists are waging war against them through the national legislature.

As the law’s sponsor, Margarita Uria, helpfully explains:

The idea of equality within marriage always stumbles over the problem of work in the house and caring for dependent people. This will be a good way of reminding people what their duties are. It is something feminists have been wanting for a long time.

No doubt they have. Because, according to Marian Salzman, described by the U.K. Observer as a “trend-spotter extraordinaire,” women are “rejecting equality in the workplace and prefer the idea of becoming full-time housewives – but not ones who actually do housework … women are happy to abandon the workplace, but not if it means spending all day at home cooking, cleaning and looking after children. Instead, they want to play the “role” of housewife with a little help from, for instance, a nanny, and someone who does the ironing.”

Her warning should sober even the most infatuated man. “Women think: ‘What’s mine is mine, and what’s his is mine.'”

Since the U.S. Supreme Court now sees fit to take international law into account when deciding what is and is not constitutional, it can only be a matter of time before a woman’s right to force her husband to do the ironing or breast-feed the baby is discovered in an emanation or a penumbra. After all, someone has to do the housework when mommy is busy sitting on a corporate board, which she’ll be doing as soon as the Norwegian concept of sex-based affirmative action for company directors crosses the Atlantic.

Young men are already responding to the increasingly odious burden of marriage by delaying it or avoiding it altogether, but for the most part, they are doing so without conscious design. It is time for men to become aware that as the more economically productive class, they are the natural prey of the government and its family-control machinery. The courts have already demonstrated that a man – any man – will do for their purposes when child support is required, even if that man can be proved to have no relationship to the child.

For non-Christian men, the answer is easy: Avoid marriage at all costs. Marriage only weakens your legal and emotional positions vis-a-vis a woman, and since American women will freely provide companionship, sex and children upon request, to marry is to give up a great deal for what is literally less than nothing.

A Christian man, on other hand, cannot freely engage in non-committal sexual relationships, and so must marry. He can improve his odds, however, by marrying a Christian woman who is not on the career track. This will significantly increase the chances that he will not find himself at the legal mercy of a sociopath obsessed with momentary happiness ?ber alles, but blessed by a traditional wife committed to building a family and a life together with him instead.

But is it possible for a Christian couple to avoid the state’s machinery of control and still marry before God? Yes, according to pastor Matt Trewhella. “What’s recorded in a family Bible will stand up as legal evidence in any court of law in America. Early Americans were married without a marriage license. They simply recorded their marriages in their family Bibles. So should we.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2005/04/29779/#39sg5CGzOUYgvK0o.99

[n david]

Originally Posted by Aquila

You're right.

You agree, yet you continue to try to use the scripture, twisting it to try and validate your belief on marriage.

Originally Posted by Aquila

In Paul's day, among the Jews a divorce was typically a "writ of divorcement", or "get". It was a written decree written and issued by the husband terminating the marriage. It was often reviewed by a rabbi prior to being delivered to the wife. No government courts were necessary. Disputes relating to the separation were handled by the synagogue, not the Roman courts.

In the early Christian church, marriage and divorce laws primarily applied to those who were official Roman citizens. This citizenship was either granted according to birth or upon purchase. The majority of people under Rome's authority were not classified as official citizens, and so Roman courts felt no need to even involve themselves in their marriages or divorces. So, the average marriage was established by a private contract between families or individual couples. It was also terminated by private decree in accordance to local family traditions.

So essentially, for the most party, marriages were a private contract, agreement, or arrangement between families or individuals.

Correct. Marriages were arranged and blessed by the families within a ceremony. They did not simply jump into the sack and call it good.

Originally Posted by Aquila

Today, since the government took over marriage and states have abolished common law marriage laws in all but a handful of states, marriage is now a "civil contract" with the government. And termination of the contract essentially becomes a lawsuit to be settled in a court of law in accordance to civil statute.

So, while divorce wasn't similar to a lawsuit in Paul's day, it is today.

Again, I don't read 1 Corinthians 13 as applying to divorce. That is about an argument between believers which is taken to court.

If a couple wants to have a private ceremony with family and their Pastor, I'm fine with that. What I'm not okay with is the claim that all a couple needs to do is jump in bed together and have sex and God is good with that. Not so.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by n david

You agree, yet you continue to try to use the scripture, twisting it to try and validate your belief on marriage.

I'm only explaining why you're absolutely right in one sense, but wrong in another sense.

Correct. Marriages were arranged and blessed by the families within a ceremony. They did not simply jump into the sack and call it good.

It's more complicated than that. First, in Judaism, it was typically expected if the bride still lived with her father. But if she didn't, or her parents were dead, a ceremony wasn't necessary. In addition, what ceremonies we see were cultural and varied from location to location, era to era. The BIBLE doesn't prescribe a specific ceremony. And, all of this is only true for JEWISH couples. In the early church these ceremonies and traditions weren't performed among Gentile believers. They had their own traditions, including couples who made covenant together when they were alone. They would announce their union to family later that day or on one of the next days, and the church would either bless the union or condemn it. But the church never established unions. You will NOT find a single Scripture requiring a specific ceremony or stating that the church is to officiate a wedding. Nor will you find a prescribed procedure for a preacher who wishes to wed a couple.

Again, I don't read 1 Corinthians 13 as applying to divorce. That is about an argument between believers which is taken to court.

So, you think that Gentile Christians who divorced rushed down to the Roman courts to divorce? First, the Roman court would only wish to involve itself if they were official Roman citizens. Second, most Christians were not official Roman citizens, they were of the poorer classes. It is possible that Jewish Christians might have turned to the synagogues before they were cast out of Judaism, but afterwards where would they go to divorce? The truth is, most Christian marriages had nothing to do with Roman government. And when they divorced, the church would try to help them reconcile and if it failed, the departing party was allowed to simply leave. If they were a believer, they were not to remarry, and men were commanded not to divorce their wives (demand that they leave). If one of them was an unbeliever or apostate, and wished to leave, they were to be allowed to leave, and the believer was no longer bound by the covenant of that union, meaning they could remarry in the Lord. Early Christians didn't rush down to government courts to separate.

To say that Paul would admonish Christians not to settle matters in the courts of the unbelievers, but would support Christians turning to the courts of the unbelievers in divorce is to create a duplicity. When Paul speaks of "lawsuits" (as you put it) it includes any legal dispute "of this world", that includes divorce.

If a couple wants to have a private ceremony with family and their Pastor, I'm fine with that.

What kind of ceremony is needed? Where is a specific ceremony prescribed in the Bible? In addition, where is a pastor required to marry a couple in Scripture? Yes, rabbis and early Christian elders were invited to bless unions at the time of the marriage. But on other occasions couples came to church and announced that they had chosen to marry. Thus the elders would bless the couple after the fact. This is why the Catholic church established various marriage traditions, there wasn't any uniformity. In addition, if a couple gave their promises/vows and married alone behind a barn, it was blessed by the church. However, after marriage was made a sacrament, it required a priest. Those marriages established privately or through any other means of commitment were then deemed lawful but illicit marriages.

What I'm not okay with is the claim that all a couple needs to do is jump in bed together and have sex and God is good with that. Not so.

That's not what I'm presenting. I too disagree with that.

What I'm saying is when a couple is truly committed to one another, they enter into the marriage covenant through cohabitation (leaving father and mother and cleaving unto one another). This was deemed the most basic of marriages. If the man took a woman under his roof and committed to care for her he was her "husband". He "husbanded" her. He became her caretaker, provider, and defender. To "husband" (as a verb) is to engage in husbandry, the care and cultivation of another (although today we use it strictly to speak of the care of animals because women are no longer considered "property"). The commitment to live together and build a life together was (and is) the essence of the covenant. This is why common law marriages going all the way back to ancient Greece were established by cohabitation and repute. You take her in, you claim her as your wife, consummate, you present her as your wife, the two of you sire children, and the two of you raise the children. You build a home and family together = Married. It's a natural right, not a civil right. And so instead of officiating these unions as churches do today, in early Christianity the church would either bless these unions or condemn them, and it didn't matter if the state was involved or not.

Your statement begs the question, "Then what is fornication?" And this is an important question. Transient sexual encounters (promiscuity), going to prostitutes, participating in revelries, sex without the commitment of care and cohabitation, etc., are all "fornication" (sexual immorality). And if one is committed to another, such sins are adultery.

[n david]

Originally Posted by Aquila

So, you think that Gentile Christians who divorced rushed down to the Roman courts to divorce? First, the Roman court would only wish to involve itself if they were official Roman citizens. Second, most Christians were not official Roman citizens, they were of the poorer classes. It is possible that Jewish Christians might have turned to the synagogues before they were cast out of Judaism, but afterwards where would they go to divorce? The truth is, most Christian marriages had nothing to do with Roman government. And when they divorced, the church would try to help them reconcile and if it failed, the departing party was allowed to simply leave. If they were a believer, they were not to remarry, and men were commanded not to divorce their wives (demand that they leave). If one of them was an unbeliever or apostate, and wished to leave, they were to be allowed to leave, and the believer was no longer bound by the covenant of that union, meaning they could remarry in the Lord. Early Christians didn't rush down to government courts to separate.

I never said they did. As previously agreed, marriage did not involve the government so there was obviously no need to take the matter before a court.

Originally Posted by Aquila

To say that Paul would admonish Christians not to settle matters in the courts of the unbelievers, but would support Christians turning to the courts of the unbelievers in divorce is to create a duplicity. When Paul speaks of "lawsuits" (as you put it) it includes any legal dispute. It wasn't codified as we have codified it today.

I disagree. Paul was emphatic about submitting to the higher powers. Peter wrote that Christians should submit themselves to "every ordinance of man."

If a Christian chooses a civil marriage, they should abide by the ordinance of that marriage, including divorce court.

Again, 1 Cor 13 has nothing to do with divorce.

Originally Posted by Aquila

What kind of ceremony is needed? Where is a specific ceremony prescribed in the Bible? In addition, where is a pastor required to marry a couple in Scripture? Yes, rabbis and early Christian elders were invited to bless unions at the time of the marriage. But on other occasions couples came to church and announced that they had been married. Thus the elders would bless the couple after the fact. This is why the Catholic church established various marriage traditions, there wasn't any uniformity. In addition, if a couple gave their promises/vows and married alone behind a barn, it was blessed by the church. However, after marriage was made a sacrament, it required a priest. Those marriages established privately or through any other means of commitment were then deemed lawful but illicit marriages.

There is no written record in the Bible, though history can provide that for you. There are scriptures of wedding feasts, so one could imagine that some kind of ceremony occurred.

Originally Posted by Aquila

That's not what I'm presenting. I too disagree with that.

There are previous posts from you which appear to suggest exactly that. One post regarding an unmarried couple who was turned away from a relatives home, you stated (paraphrase) if they had slept together they were considered a couple in the eyes of God. Other posts have held similar views - that a couple who engages in sex should be considered a couple.

[LOVE JESUS]

I would think it is against the law of the land to marry a couple without the wedding license. It would not be legal. I know my husband will not marry anyone unless he has possession of the license and he mails it in himself. It was a state law where we lived that the person performing the ceremony had to mail in the license - no exceptions.