Marriage
Dear People of St. Boniface,
One of the things the Corinthians quizzed me on was marriage. I came among them as an unmarried man, though aware that other missionaries were not only married but took their wives along with them.
Some of your experts have tried to work out whether I was ever married; as I was training to be a rabbi, if I was ever to be a member of the élite Sanhedrin council in Jerusalem I would have had to be married. But now I am in Heaven, where they “do not marry nor are taken in marriage”, so let us leave that aside.
Some of the unmarried converts in Corinth were causing a disturbance by suggesting that they were the only true Christians, and that those who were married should leave their partners.
Unfortunately you only read a small portion of what I had to say on this theme. As you know, at that time I was convinced that Christ would soon return and that the world would end. I therefore recommended that everybody should stay in the condition in which they were. Later I saw things differently, and you may notice that the anonymous follower who takes up my ideas in writing the letter to Christians in Ephesus has a lot to say about the positive blessings of marriage.
But I also covered other issues, such as: what if one marriage partner believes in Christ, and the other objects?
To be unmarried for Christ brings blessings if allied to other ‘self-denials’, which I hope I put into practice, like a poverty of lifestyle. Now Father David, are you receiving me?
My blessing, from Heaven, PAUL.