Hungarian Church Press, 1968 (20. évfolyam, 2. szám)
1968-06-01 / 2. szám
...Jr vcl "j; Special Ifcuwcr 1968 No 2- 78 -(07782) A/ Struggle Against the High Dive ce Rate In order to speak about the negativ phenomenon of divorce, we must first speak briefly about marriage, divorce being an indication cf the crisis of marriage,. We take Matthew 19:6 as the classic text of divorce: "What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder”® Jesus calls marriage, the joining together of the partners, GodJs work, while divorce, the putting asunder of the two, is man-’s werk, the destruction of what God has made® a) On Carriage Marriage is God7s will revealed end proclaimed in Creation in tliot He created man; "male and female created him"0 Man and woman were created for each other# It is with "the help meet for him” that man expresses God's creative wisdom« With their different structures and functions, man and woman constitute a structural and functional unity« a Marriage is the unique lifa-companionship cf a man and/woman, hence exclusive, the complete mutuality and reciprocity of the bodily, spiritual properties and values cf the two partners; a life—companionship which, by virtue of its fullness, is not temporary, it is, without conditions and reservations, a union for life. So the ethical marks of the, marriage are exclusivity, fullness and permanence« Upon this fullness of companionship God bestows the gift of the utmost intimacy, the gift cf so.®* But this contact between the two partners is exclusiveit is only with this husband and with this wife that man car. become /in the most intimate companionship cf life# Sexual life is not objectively buc personally conditionod. But this personal condition also means that it is established also with the view of the birth cf further person or persons« Another condition of marfiage is the obligation to help one anotbers On the basis of the Gospel we may speak of the philia, cf the bearing of one another^ burden, of a service, a continuous service for one another® These Biblical insights concern in. fret the essence cf every marriage union« If we distinguished between "Christian” and "non-Christian marriages", then we would have no right to speak about marriages or we would be under the necessity to apply two sets of moral norms® It is precisely the matter of having a single Biblical foundation on which we must stand when we are about to speek about the remedies for the ills of marriage« b) The Effect of Social Factors On Marriage In the light of statistical data, we might make two apparantely contradictory statements about marriages in Hungary: the first is that the number of divorces is graving, and the other that the number of weddings is also growing# But we must consider that the radical historical, change in the life
