The Essence of Marriage, Again

My thanks to Bret Lythgoe for asking a question that serves so well as a jumping-off point to explain what I was trying to accomplish in my last post here. In comment 11 on that thread, he wrote,

Marriage is essentially about love, and committment, that’s lifelong. Why would anyone wish to deny that, to any sincere person?

The way he worded it reveals a number of issues. (In this I will be echoing and expanding upon excellent responses already given by Pentamom and Craig there on that thread.) First, there is a definitional and philosophical problem with stringing the words, “is essentially about,” together as he has done. Let’s take that a step at a time, starting with the word “essentially.” It has at two meanings that might potentially be relevant in a context like this one. It might mean that characteristics x, y, and z are essential to marriage, meaning necessary; such that if any of them are missing, there is no marriage. This cannot be what Bret meant, though, because I’m sure he would agree there are real marriages that lack love or lifelong commitment.

So he might mean “essentially” in its other likely sense, of the essence. That is, he might be saying the essence of marriage is lifelong love and commitment. Now, when essence is used this way, technically it’s referring to the nature of a thing, often called the essential nature. It speaks of that by virtue of which a thing is uniquely and definitively what it is. It is a statement of the thing’s being, its reality, its ontological nature (to extend into further technical language).

Essence in that sense of the word clashes horribly with the word about. “Essentially about” is rather a contradiction in terms. I tried to show this in my prior post, with the word for. I spoke of how I had discovered that the five-fingered appendage on my arm was good for stabilizing me on stairways, typing, and conveying dessert to my mouth. (I could as easily have said that was what that appendage was about.) I said, if I could build some contraption that would do those things for me, it would be the same thing as that appendage on the end of my arm. Clearly, though, enumerating things I could do with that appendage could never answer the question I started with: What is it? The answer to that question must start with it is my hand. It starts not with the verb, it “does,” or the descriptors “it is about” or “it is for.” It starts with the verb to be, or is. It begins with a statement of the hand’s being.

There’s a long-running debate in the history of philosophy between realists and nominalists, and it’s being replayed in the marriage debate. I’m going to have to over-simplify that controversy (with considerable trepidation, and begging forgiveness as I do so) by moving directly to its application in this issue. A realist would be likely to say that there is something that marriage really is. My own understanding of marriage is realist: I believe marriage is a lifelong generative commitment of love between a man and a woman; with emphasis on that word is.*

A nominalist would be likely to say that “marriage” is the name we give to a certain custom, institution, relationship, or whatever; that a marriage is whatever we call a marriage. A realist, in contrast, would be likely to say of some unorthodox relationship, “You can call that a marriage all you want, but that still doesn’t make it one.”

Bret’s question seems to try to walk both paths at once, and that’s a serious problem. When he uses the word essentially the way he does, he’s speaking in realist terms. When he says it is “about” x, y, and z, though, he’s speaking in nominalist terms. The two approaches are incompatible. If marriage is something essentially, then it makes no sense to define it exclusively, as he does, in terms of what it is about.

Part of the realist/nominalist struggle comes to the question for realists, “How do you know what marriage really is? Where is it written?” Believers in God’s revelation have a ready answer to that question. Others are bound to have difficulty with it. That doesn’t mean it’s just a religious issue, though, because the nominalists have a significant problem of their own. If marriage is to be defined by a list of attributes, what’s on the list?

Bret says the list is “essentially” about lifelong love and commitment. But that’s obviously the wrong list. I love my children with a lifelong commitment. I have a lifelong love and commitment toward God. Neither of those is marriage. Nor is anything about those relationships denied by refusing to call them marriages. It’s the wrong list, too, in that it allows (with a twisted but not uncommon sense of the word “love”) various kinds of obviously unhealthy relationships to be called marriage. We have records of people “marrying” animals, “marrying” themselves, “marrying” their children. I’ll echo Bret’s question: why would anyone wish to deny calling that “marriage,” if the persons are sincere?

Now the nominalist is in a pickle. He has to know how to draw the line between marriage and non-marriage. How do animals get excluded from the list of marriage-ables? Where is it written? Where is it written that the list must include a restriction to two people? Why not three, or ten? And where is it written that love needs to be on the list? If I were to set out to build a contraption to do what the appendage on the end of my arm does, what would need to be on the list? Playing piano? Playing ping-pong? I can do both of those a little bit. Raking the yard? I really can’t do that right now, not because of a problem with that particular appendage, but because of a shoulder injury. What is the right list?

The nominalist could add these words to the marriage-definition list: “as so endorsed by the state.” In other words, define marriage however you will, the real issue is whether the state will regard it as one. That’s approaching a realist view: “A marriage is a relationship endorsed as such by the state.” As answers go, however, it’s no help at all in deciding which relationships should be endorsed as such by the state. Or maybe it is: the various states of the U.S. generally endorse only male-female relationships as marriages. There’s your answer! Or at least, it’s your clear illustration of why that approach can’t settle much for us.

Anyway, if the realist view of marriage presents difficulties for those who don’t believe in revelation, so does the nominalist view, and it’s the same problem: Where is it written? Gay-rights advocates have no revelation or higher principle to point to. They’ve tried, I’ll admit. They point to principles like “lifelong love and commitment.” That set of descriptors obviously fails to define marriage, as we’ve already seen. Their better attempts involve terms like civil rights and equal treatment, but those, too, beg multiple questions. Are we denying gays the civil right of same-sex marriage? Who made it a civil right? God? (See the Declaration of Independence, Paragraph Two.) Or shall we make it one ourselves? In that case, who are the we who do that? What about all we who disagree? How do civil rights get created, anyway? Do we deny adults the civil right to marry seven-year olds? On what principle do we declare one a civil right, and not the other? How enduring is that principle?

In a follow-up comment (#13 on the aforementioned thread), Bret attempted to address those kinds of questions:

The principal reason, the “slippery slope argument” against gay marriage doesn’t work, is that, it’s been empirically shown, that marrying animals, is harmful to one’s sexual development, and the animal cannot consent. Marrying a bunch of people results in the same problems. Also, polygamy, as well as bestiality, results in emotional problems to the participants. One cannot give proper love and time to ten wives, for example.

Note how he expands his list of (essential?) attributes of marriage: contributing toward sexual development, consent, giving proper time, avoiding emotional problems, and so on. Here we see the same nominalist problem again: where are these written? Do they constitute the whole list? How do we decide?

Let me close here by reviewing what I’ve tried to accomplish in this post. Virtually every time this topic comes up, someone says, “but you haven’t proved same-sex marriage is wrong!” It’s a diversionary tactic, but I need to at least acknowledge it. This post has not been about trying to prove my position. I’ve been trying rather to clarify the debate. I’ve also tried to answer Bret’s very specific question, “Why would anyone wish to deny that, to any sincere person?” There is more to that answer than what I’ve written here, but this is at least part of it.

Either there is something that marriage is, or there is not. If there is, then no amount of legislation will change it, yet clearly it would be wise for legislation to reflect what marriage is. If there is not, then legislation or social pressure could, and predictably will, change it to include all kinds of unhealthy things—unhealthy for individuals, families, and all of society. The worst outcome of all would be for legislation to change it nominally, in denial of what it is really; for once we start down the nominal path there is no end in sight, and we will become ever more divorced in language, custom, and practice, from what is really real.

*I should explain “generative†(the other terms are familiar). I’m using it here in a broader sense than the dictionary definition, because I don’t know a better English term for the sense I’m trying to convey. It involves multiple levels of building and generating, beginning first with the home and the marital unit. It involves bearing children and raising them, developing a family (which not incidentally is the basic generative unit of all society), and preparing the children to become and to build the next generation. Generativity includes procreation but is broader than that; thus procreation per se is not necessary to marriage in cases where child-bearing is impossible (the infertile or the aged).

I could have added two more clauses to that essential definition: that marriage is a human reflection of the triune nature of God and of God’s relationship to his people. Both of those are clearly true, in my view, but to introduce them into the argument would be to divert attention from the main point I’m trying to make.