“Marriage is, of its essence, a comprehensive union: a union of will (by consent) and body (by sexual union); inherently ordered to procreation and thus the broad sharing of family life; and calling for permanent and exclusive commitment, whatever the spouses’ preferences.” To summarize: Sex. Kids. Faithfulness.

What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense by Serif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson and Robert P. George. 2012: Encounter Books. ISBN 978-1-59403-622-4

Oscar and Alfred live together. They share a bank account and divide the household chores. They have no dependents. They each desire that the other be the one who visits them in the hospital in case of illness and who makes end-of-life directives. They offer one another security and companionship.

Are they married?

Or are they brothers? College roommates? Monks?

This example from What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense by Serif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George highlights a current social and public policy crisis.

What, exactly, qualifies as a marriage?

The authors argue that we must define marriage in order to recognize and defend it as a human good, and they attempt to do this from a natural law perspective.

The book is an expanded version of an article originally published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy (volume 34, Winter 2010). Written in response to the increasing push toward legal marriage status for homosexual couples, it is actually not so much an argument against sexual alternatives as it is a paring down of marriage to its core—establishing a definition to differentiate marriage from all other relationships.

On page 6, the authors define marriage with what they call the “conjugal view”: “Marriage is, of its essence, a comprehensive union: a union of will (by consent) and body (by sexual union); inherently ordered to procreation and thus the broad sharing of family life; and calling for permanent and exclusive commitment, whatever the spouses’ preferences.”

To summarize: Sex. Kids. Faithfulness.

The conjugal view is set against what the authors call a “revisionist view.” This is a flexible definition of marriage: “in essence, a loving emotional bond, one distinguished by its intensity— a bond that need not point beyond the partners, in which fidelity is ultimately subject to one’s own desires.” People holding to a revisionist view can embrace legal recognition for a variety of relationships—everything from homosexual unions to polyamorous groups.

What is Marriage? then spends the bulk of its 97 pages (plus a 10-page appendix) arguing for the three essential elements of the conjugal view. The authors reason from historic and worldwide assumptions about marriage, and also from research related to family life and the good of society.

They begin with an extended argument for sexual intercourse as the defining marital act: only in coitus do two bodies “coordinate toward one end that encompasses them both.” (p 25) Using the analogy of digestive organs working together to accomplish the goal of nourishing the whole person, the authors argue that human beings are sexually and reproductively incomplete without organic bodily union, something that can only happen between one man and one woman.

With children and family life proposed as the central goal of the defining marital act (and the authors do answer at length objections related to infertility) permanence and exclusivity are natural requirements for these societal goods to best function.

This three-part definition, then, allows the authors to judge whether two men (or three women and a giraffe) ought to be given the legal designation of marriage. Relationships which have an essential inability to participate in these elements (or are intrinsically contrary to them) ought not to be defined as a marriage.

In additional to unpacking the logical flaws inherent in the fluid revisionist category, What Is Marriage? addresses several related questions.

So, for example, the authors include a chapter making the case that marriage is a matter for public policy and legal regulation. (In keeping with the conservative and libertarian tradition of the Harvard Journal, their arguments appeal to those who favor limited government.) “Most obviously,” write the authors, “where marriages never form or easily break down, the state expands to fill the domestic vacuum by lawsuits to determine paternity, visitation rights, child support, and alimony.” (p 45)

And, very helpfully, they delineate the potential ill effects of a widespread adoption of the revisionist view—poor outcomes for children raised by non-biological families, denigration of non-sexual friendship as something “less” than marriage, destabilization of even traditional marriage by a culture of temporary relationships.

As the authors state: “The revisionist proposal would harm people (especially future generations) by warping their idea of what marriage is. It would teach that marriage is about emotional union and cohabitation, without any inherent connections to bodily union or family life. As people internalized this view, their ability to realize genuine marital union would diminish.” (p 8)

I will admit that I didn’t fully grasp every nuance of the authors’ argument. (About 15 years ago, I took a college logic course taught by a professor whom I remember primarily for his mismatched socks. My shaky grasp of modus ponens has not improved in the intervening years.) What is Marriage? is propositional, and its conclusions are tightly reasoned. It should come with coffee.

But the basic principles are accessible even to those without philosophy degrees. Girgis and company write simply. Their vocabulary is everyday English, and their sentence structure is brief and plain. They even repeat and summarize frequently—a welcome breather for those of us average students!

Your reaction to this book will depend, in part, on your opinion of the value of natural law arguments. The authors make almost no mention of religious tenants (except so far as they establish the historic understanding of marriage and also religious liberty.) There is certainly no appeal to Scripture. So, most Christians will find the argument incomplete as an ethic for the godly life.

And evangelicals will probably disagree outright with some of the authors’ suggestions for accommodating homosexual unions (without granting them legal marriage status.) The authors state, for example, “societies. . .need deprive no same-sex-attracted people of practical goods, social equality, or personal fulfillment” (p 7) and then go on to suggest that they are ambivalent about homosexual unions because they have no bearing on the definition of marriage.

I believe that the authors are making a mistake. They fail to acknowledge that a widespread acceptance of homoerotic expression fails to promote—and even detracts from—the human good of marriage.

Even without legal recognition, cultural approval of homosexuality makes heterosexual attraction (the “will” necessary for conjugal marriage) an option, rather than a norm. Just as premarital sex detracts from one impetus to marriage, and a divorce culture fosters the illusion that marriage is not necessarily a permanent commitment, so homosexuality’s public prevalence provides an alternative path which diverts some people from pursuing the good of marriage.

The authors seem eager to make sure their book is not an attack on sexual preference (the final chapter states “our argument here has not been about homosexuality, as important and disputed as that subject is. In the first analysis, what we have debated—what we have defended—is marriage”) but they would have done well to explore how a culture of personal sexual choices does harm to traditional marriage.

Evangelicals will have to make that argument without the help of this book.

That said, the authors’ fundamental “sex, kids, faithfulness” marriage definition is extremely helpful. It finds a biblical corollary in Malachi 2:14-15:

“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.”

Why does God hate divorce? Because it disrupts a life-long union that was intended for the nurture of children.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that God hates other perversions of marriage along the same lines. Homosexual unions (or polyamorous ones) cannot produce a godly seed, and are therefore unacceptable. It’s not the whole reason, but it’s a valid one, and What Is Marriage? argues it well.

In the end, Christians will arrive at the same place as the book’s authors: marriage is only rightly defined as a covenant between one man and one woman.

Well, what did you expect?

© Copyright 2013 Megan Evans Hill – used with permission
Megan Hill is a PCA pastor’s wife and regular contributor to The Aquila Report. She and her mother write Sunday Women, a blog about ministry life.