{
  "id": "dict_003492",
  "term": "marriage",
  "slug": "marriage",
  "letter": "M",
  "entry_type": "practice",
  "entry_family": "theological_term",
  "tier": 2,
  "aliases": [],
  "short_definition": "Marriage is the God-ordained covenant union of husband and wife for companionship, holiness, and ordered family life.",
  "simple_one_line": "Marriage is the God-ordained covenant union of husband and wife for companionship, holiness, and ordered family life.",
  "tooltip_text": "Marriage is the God-ordained covenant union of husband and wife for companionship, holiness, and ordered family...",
  "lede_intro": "The topic of marriage concerns the God-ordained covenant union of husband and wife for companionship, holiness, and ordered family life, so this entry should be read from the texts that define it and then from its place within the wider doctrinal shape of Scripture.",
  "at_a_glance_definition": "Marriage is the God-ordained covenant union of husband and wife for companionship, holiness, and ordered family life.",
  "at_a_glance_key_points": [
    "Start with the texts that present marriage as the God-ordained covenant union of husband and wife for companionship, holiness, and ordered family life.",
    "Trace how marriage serves the gathered life, holiness, order, and witness of Christ's people.",
    "Do not define marriage by tradition, reaction, or church culture alone; let the whole canon set its meaning and limits."
  ],
  "description_academic_short": "Marriage is the God-ordained covenant union of husband and wife for companionship, holiness, and ordered family life. In dictionary use, the term should be explained from its immediate contexts, its place in biblical theology, and its bearing on faithful Christian life.",
  "description_academic_full": "Marriage is the God-ordained covenant union of husband and wife for companionship, holiness, and ordered family life. More fully, the topic should be interpreted through the passages that name it, illustrate it, regulate it, or warn about its misuse. A sound treatment therefore asks how marriage relates to creation, sin, redemption, discipleship, and the church's life under Christ, without turning a practical category into a slogan detached from context.",
  "background_biblical_context": "Biblically, marriage is framed by creation order, covenant obligation, wisdom instruction, Jesus' teaching, and apostolic exhortation as the God-ordained covenant union of husband and wife for companionship, holiness, and ordered family life. Scripture therefore places marriage within holiness, fidelity, household responsibility, and love of neighbor rather than leaving it to custom, appetite, or private judgment alone.",
  "background_historical_context": "Historically, discussion of marriage developed where biblical teaching had to be worked out in household life, moral formation, economic relations, legal judgment, and public order. Jewish legal reflection, patristic moral teaching, medieval canon law, Reformation ethics, and modern social theology each pressed the term into new settings.",
  "background_jewish_ancient_context": "In ancient Jewish and wider Mediterranean context, marriage was heard within household structure, kinship obligations, inheritance patterns, marriage customs, honor-shame expectations, and covenant identity. That background clarifies why biblical commands address family life concretely while also challenging surrounding abuses and distortions.",
  "key_texts_primary": [
    "Gen. 2:18-24",
    "Matt. 19:4-6",
    "Eph. 5:31-33"
  ],
  "key_texts_secondary": [
    "Prov. 18:22",
    "Mal. 2:14-16",
    "Heb. 13:4"
  ],
  "original_language_note": null,
  "original_language_terms": [],
  "theological_significance": "Theological reflection on marriage is important because it refers to the God-ordained covenant union of husband and wife for companionship, holiness, and ordered family life, clarifying how Scripture orders marriage, family life, and bodily conduct under God's authority.",
  "philosophical_explanation": "Philosophically, Marriage turns on what kind of creature the human person is: embodied, habituated, socially located, morally responsible, and answerable before God. The main pressure points are habit and intention, embodied limits and moral agency, and the difference between descriptive psychology and normative anthropology. The best accounts therefore resist both moralism and reductionism by keeping anthropology tethered to doctrine and discipleship.",
  "interpretive_cautions": "Do not handle marriage as a vague label, ministry slogan, or proof-text shortcut detached from its textual setting. Watch how the language operates across redemptive history, and distinguish descriptive narrative usage from covenantal or doctrinal significance rather than lifting it out of the unfolding biblical storyline. Use the entry carefully enough to prevent it from carrying more doctrinal weight than the text assigns, while still allowing later theological reflection to summarize real biblical patterns.",
  "major_views_note": "Marriage is usually treated as normatively addressed in Scripture, but traditions differ over how its moral claims should be specified, casuistically applied, and pastorally administered. The main points of disagreement concern creation order, covenant fidelity, pastoral wisdom, and the difference between abiding principle and culture-shaped expression.",
  "doctrinal_boundaries": "Marriage must be framed within Scripture's account of creation, fall, embodied agency, and moral responsibility rather than reduced to psychology, sociology, or bare rulekeeping. It should neither excuse moral agency nor treat fallen desire as morally neutral, yet it must also avoid collapsing human life into therapeutic description or social mechanism. Used rightly, marriage marks the moral and theological fence lines within which repentance, discipleship, and holiness can be taught with clarity.",
  "practical_significance": "Pastorally, marriage matters because believers need wise, Scripture-shaped guidance for everyday obedience, worship, suffering, relationships, stewardship, and life together in the church.",
  "related_entries": [],
  "see_also": [],
  "meta_description": "Marriage is the God-ordained covenant union of husband and wife for companionship, holiness, and ordered family life. In theological use, the topic...",
  "jsonld_description": "Marriage is the God-ordained covenant union of husband and wife for companionship, holiness, and ordered family life. More fully, the entry should be read from the passages that establish its meaning, the doctrinal...",
  "source_basis": "scripture-led synthesis",
  "public_url": "/companion-bible-dictionary/bible-dictionary/marriage/index.html",
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  "public_json_url": "/companion-bible-dictionary/data/dictionary/marriage.json",
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  "canonical_term": "marriage",
  "canonical_slug": "marriage",
  "authority_status": "finalized",
  "review_state": "finalized",
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}