“It would have been much more desirable if Protestantism could have found some room for celibacy.”
Lacking context or attribution, one might think that the above quote comes from a Roman Catholic critique of Protestant theology. Yet to most folks' surprise, this particular statement comes not from one of Rome’s theologians or some atheist critic of Protestantism, but from one of the Reformed tradition’s darling systematists: the esteemed Dutch reformed theologian, Herman Bavinck.
To be clear, Bavinck considered marriage the “usual route” for men and women. Yet he was nevertheless insistent that celibacy “can be permissible and obligatory in particular circumstances,” and that God often “assigns to people the duty of performing their vocation and pursuing their life purpose not through marriage but outside of marriage.” Because of this, Bavinck warned that Protestants, in all their well-meaning zeal for marriage, must be careful not to commit the opposite error of Rome by making marriage the “faster and safer route toward perfection” and thereby violating the consciences of those who feel God’s call to an equally legitimate vocation.
Sadly, despite Bavinck’s lament and exhortation, today’s Protestants—including traditional, orthodox types—continue to suffer from a lack of solid theological understanding of biblical singleness. Consider two pieces published in the past year or so. The first was written by Matthew Capone, who argued that Jesus didn’t actually mean to describe singleness as eschatologically ultimate when he taught that the “sons of that age shall neither marry nor be given in marriage.” What our Lord actually meant was something more like what Paul wrote in Ephesians 5. The second, published by sociologist and researcher Lyman Stone, resorted more to history and sociology than to Scripture to argue that singleness, though “not a sin,” is a “pitiable state at any age.”
Both are right that Scripture does not account singleness as a sin and that, for many singles, not being married is deeply disappointing. But, in their well-meaning attempts to affirm the goodness of marriage and validate the real loss experienced by many Christian singles, both writers sorely misconstrue what Paul and Jesus actually teach about singleness.
Capone and Stone both argue that Scripture nowhere identifies singleness as a sin but that it is not good. Capone argues that, while not essential or necessary, marriage is normative and those who miss out on it incur a “real loss.” Likewise, Stone, while he acknowledges that there is historical precedence and value in “ascetic” singleness (i.e. monasticism) and widowhood, argues that singleness (i.e. being unmarried), while not a sin, is “not good” because it leaves people vulnerable and prone to sexual temptation.
However well-meaning their reassurance that singleness is neither sinful nor good, the two authors have left out some critical teachings of Paul in 1 Corinthians 7.
Paul’s endorsement of singleness in 1 Corinthians 7 is not the half-hearted endorsement of Capone or Stone. For Paul, singleness is not just “not a sin.” Nor does he even paint it as a lamentable state, as such. Paul unequivocally tells the unmarried and widowed in Corinth: “it is good…to remain single” (1 Cor 7:8). Later on, Paul says that those who marry their betrothed do well, while those who refrain from marriage “will do even better” (7:38). Paul thinks that even the widow, who would have been vulnerable as a result of being unmarried, is “happier if she remains as she is” (7:40).
Contrary to what Stone suggests, Paul is not endorsing a uniquely “ascetic” form of singleness. In fact, given the dualistic cosmologies popular in ancient Corinth, Paul is at pains to correct the Corinthians’ erroneous thinking about the spiritual superiority of a sexless life. For Paul, what makes singleness “better” is not the absence of sex as such, for neither sex nor marriage is a sin, as he is at pains to show. Rather, singleness is the “happier” state because it provides believers the opportunity to be “anxious about the things of the Lord” rather than “worldly things” because the “appointed time has grown very short.”
For Paul, all singles should live devoted to the Lord, not just widows or Stone’s “ascetic” types. Paul knows nothing of Stone’s “neutral” not-yet-married, singleness. For Paul, one either leverages singleness for the Lord, like Paul; or one leverages it for worldly or sinful purposes, like idle widows (1 Tim 5:13).
Paul, of course, is no idealist. He knows that weakness and temptation exist, and so encourages marriage for betrothed couples who are struggling with self-control and, elsewhere, for widows who are given to idleness (1 Tim 5:14). Nevertheless, in his famous recommendation that those who “burn” or are idle to marry, Paul is not saying that marriage as such is the cure for a lack of self-control. Nor does he think it okay that singles live without self-control until marriage. He knows too much of God’s grace and too much of human sinfulness to think otherwise. For Paul, God has given His Holy Spirit to all believers—married and unmarried. And it is the Holy Spirit who alone produces the fruit of requisite for godliness.
Capone and Stone are also right to remind readers of the disappointment and dissatisfaction of the average Christian single. As Stone reports, the majority of not-yet-married singles desire marriage and yet are not married for reasons outside of their control. For such individuals, their desire is good and reasonable, and their disappointment is lamentable. As research has found: marriage does increase happiness. When healthy, marriage can create emotional security, boost economic stability, and deepen one’s sense of meaning. Given the goodness of marriage and its benefits, it's reasonable that those who long for it and yet miss out are sad. Their grief matters to God and it should matter to us.
But there’s more to the story. At the heart of both pieces is an anxiety about the rise of what Capone calls “post-familialism,” which has been elsewhere defined as “the normalization of long term or permanent singleness and childlessness”, and its attendant challenges, especially population decline and discipleship. For the two authors, marriage is the key remedy to these problems and therefore the Church must spend more time promoting and preaching about marriage and family instead of talking about singleness.
The Church must certainly take necessary and prudential steps to reinforce the goodness of marriage and family life. Yet, in its attempts to reinvigorate marriage and family, the Church must be careful not to abandon singles to hopelessness and despair by misconstruing what Scripture actually teaches about singleness—namely, that it is good.
Rather, alongside those efforts, the Church must remind our single brothers and sisters that, in Christ, they are no longer pitiable but immensely blessed.
As the authors of the New Testament show us, singleness is rooted in the blessedness and life-giving fruitfulness of Christ. Jesus’s discourse with the Sadducees gives us a fundamental insight into this. Jesus teaches that, in the age to come, human marriage will end and that all shall be single. According to Jesus, the Sadducees reject the resurrection because they fail to understand the Scriptures and the power of God. Capone attributes the Sadducees’ failure of biblical understanding to their ignorance about how human marriage ultimately points to the heavenly marriage of Christ and the Church. While Capone is not theologically wrong, his interpretation fails to do justice to Jesus’s actual logic in this passage—as Dani Treweek has helpfully noted.
In this passage, Jesus does not teach that human marriage will end with the arrival of heavenly marriage between Christ and the Church. Rather, the end of human marriage has to do with the end of death. To put it positively: the end of human marriage and the arrival of celibacy is precipitated by the arrival and fulfillment of resurrection life.
Ultimately, Jesus uncovers that the Sadducees’s rejection of the resurrection arises from their failure to understand the purpose of marriage and procreation. In their attempt to stump Jesus the Sadducees wrongly assumed that the purpose of marriage and procreation is for humanity to “be fruitful and multiply” and for Israel to perpetuate the offspring of Abraham ad infinitum. But marriage and procreation have a telos, a terminus, an end—and that end is Jesus Christ.
This goes all the way back to the beginning. According to the Pentatuech, marriage and procreation have two purposes: fruitfulness and redemption. The first is made explicit when God commands humanity to “be fruitful and multiply,” which is understood to be carried out through procreation in the context of marriage (1:22). Secondly, after the fall, while both marriage and procreation are still ordered toward fruitfulness, fruitfulness becomes bound up with redemption. Specifically, marriage and procreation are the means by which God will bring about the promised seed—the seed promised first to Adam and Eve as the one who will crush the serpent’s head and then to Abraham as the one who will bless the nations of the earth and multiply the descendants of Abraham “as the stars of heaven” (Gen 12:3, 22:17-18, 26:4, cf. Gal 3:16).
With Christ, the promised seed arrives and thus marks the fulfillment of marriage’s dual-purpose. Jesus is the promised seed who redeems His people from sin by crushing the head of serpent through his sacrificial death. And Jesus is the seed who, through His death and resurrection, “bears much fruit” and “will draw all men to [himself]” (John 12:25, 32), giving those who receive him “the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).
Thanks to Christ, singles are no longer pitiable persons of meager social status or value. They are full-members of the Kingdom of God who, through Christ, can be fruitful and bear unique witness to the age to come. The lack of a spouse or children, as disappointing as that may be, is no longer a cause for anxiety or vulnerability. For, Christ, in bearing much fruit, has made fruitful all those who are united to him—not just those who are married and have children. Because of the fruitfulness that singles enjoy in Christ, they are freed to be “anxious about the things of the Lord” with “undivided devotion” (1 Cor 7:32, 35). In doing so, their lives confront the present form of this world that is passing away with the reality to which it will eventually give way: the eternal reign of Jesus Christ.
In the New Testament, what is “normative” is neither marriage or singleness as such, but rather that believers live out their vocations—whether single or married, bondservant or free—in faithfulness to the Lord and in the knowledge that “the present form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor 7:17-31). For all our concerns about population decline and discipleship, we must not forget that our salvation will not be found in marriage, nor in singleness, but in Our Lord.
In the meantime, we must not make it an either-or. Just as the Church should call people to marriage and reject that happy marriages are for the lucky few, she must also reject that godliness in singleness is for the lucky “ascetic” few. All singles—whether for the short or long term, whether widow or virgin—must be encouraged and equipped to live out their calling as full-members of the family of God who have a unique role to play in bearing witness to the eternal reign of Jesus Christ. Moreover, only by upholding Paul’s vision that all singles must be devoted to godliness, can the Church produce more godly men and women who can live out the vocation of marriage faithfully.
As we do this, let us take the words of Herman Bavinck to heart:
“Which of these routes is the best for a person and must be taken by a person depends only on the person, or rather on the calling of God that a person feels in his heart, and the decision thus rests with a person’s conscience. No state and no church has the right to violate this conscience by means of its own self-initiated ordinances.”