Priest
Daniel Sysoev
Marriage to a Nbeliever? NO
Translated by Deacon Nathan Williams The Rev. Daniel Sysoev Missionary Center Benevolent Fund Moscow 2014
LBC 000 UDC 000 C 95 Approved for publication by the Publications Board of the Russian Orthodox Church PB 11-104-0308 C 95
Priest Daniel Sysoev. Marriage to a Nonbeliever? Rev. Daniel Sysoev Missionary Center Benevolent Fund, Moscow, 2014. — 32 pages. ISBN 978-5-4279-0006-5 How often young men and women, when choosing their companion for life, think his or her faith to be of no importance! “We love each other, and he (or she) doesn’t mind that I go to church.” And yet this stance conceals multitudinous dangers for a Christian. At first all is well — the young couple is even married in church (at the insistence of the believer), and it seems a compromise has been reached. But then everyday life begins, and ever more frequently one hears, “You don’t care about anything but your church” ... and finally reality leaves no alternative but to choose between the person and God. This brochure is the advice of a missionary priest to Christians wishing to marry. It will also be of interest to all those who wish to understand the importance of faith in the life of every person.
LBC 86.372 UDC 271.22
© Rev. Daniel Sysoev Missionary Center Benevolent Fund, 2014 © Yulia Sysoeva, 2014
Translator’s Note
The present work comprises a response to a Russian booklet entitled Uzh Zamush… (Ready to Marry), by Elena Bogusheva, published in Russian in 2002 by Blago Press. Ready to Marry presented as authoritative a controversial version of the church’s teaching regarding marriage, maintaining that an Orthodox Christian may marry anyone with impunity, regardless of that person’s faith or lack thereof. In the present work the author presents a sharply opposing point of view, countering Ms. Bogusheva’s arguments and examining the question of whom to marry on the basis of Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition. While Fr. Daniel does touch briefly on the canonicity of marriage to adherents of heretical doctrines, this text primarily addresses the permissibility and advisability of marriage to nonbelievers – atheists and other non-Christians. Scriptural quotes are taken from the King James Version, except for cases when another translation more accurately conveys the Russian text quoted by the author.
Marriage to a Nonbeliever?
The rebirth of the Church after the persecutions gave rise to a range of issues of both a spiritual and a practical nature. The fact is, far more young women have begun coming to church than men. This has given rise to the critical question of whom they are to marry. It is no wonder, therefore, that a book examining the question, “should one marry a nonbeliever?� has met with genuine interest among readers of both sexes. Nevertheless, this work’s completely untraditional approach to so important a question is astounding. We will attempt therefore to examine this work from the standpoint of patristic theology and canon law. The subject of this work is as follows: a certain young lady has come to love a nonbeliever (one endowed with every conceivable good quality), and wants very much to marry him, substantiating this by the fact that from
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childhood all girls share the desire to become wives and mothers. Tormented by doubt and not knowing how to proceed, she turns to her spiritual father with the question: “May I marry my beloved, and will this not constitute sexual immorality?” The entire booklet consists of her spiritual father’s extensive response, from which it becomes apparent that this union will by no means be a sin, let alone sexual immorality; for, firstly, the apostle Paul permitted Christians to enter into marriage with nonbelievers, and, secondly, if this union is founded on chaste love it is endowed with grace, and is even an image of the union between Christ and the Church. Her spiritual father talks at length about love, which he understands to be a certain feeling, an emotion, and asserts that this love is entirely possible even in this sort of “marriage”. He emphasizes that the rite of holy matrimony itself is no guarantee that the family will remain intact (the more so given the superstitious attitude toward the sacrament that predominates in our time), and says that even blasphemy on the part of the spouse is not an occasion for divorce, but merely for patience on the part of the believing spouse. Hearing this response from her priest, the young lady trips back home on rosy wings and enters into “marriage” with her atheist, convinced that her action is quite proper, and only after the civil ceremony does she reveal her faith to her flabbergasted spouse. They have a practically ideal family, but as taught by her spiritual father the
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young wife does nothing more than pray for her the conversion of her “husband”, as conversation on the subject is of no interest to him. Such is the model presented to us as exemplary by the brochure’s publishers. Unfortunately, the reality a priest encounters contrasts sharply with this idyllic picture. More often than not, wives and husbands who enter into this kind of living arrangement quickly succumb to secularization. Zeal for salvation gives way to temporization, often followed by outright apostasy. How many girls have adopted Islam after marrying a Muslim, while examples to the contrary are practically unheard of! Instead of the Sunday worship services, these spouses begin to frequent the theater and popular hangouts, all in the name of pleasing their “other half”. The children of these parents grow up to be cynics who believe in nothing at all. And with good reason, considering the glaring example of hypocrisy right in front of them! It would be a mistake to think this the result merely of our own age of dissolution. The same was true of the Russian aristocracy, who gave their children in marriage to prestigious heretics, thereby producing a generation of Bazarovs.1 The same was true in Islamic countries, where girls taken into harems gave birth to the Janissaries who killed their own countrymen. The same was noted as early as the third 1
A reference to the nihilist Evgeny Bazarov, a character in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons.
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century by Hieromartyr Cyprian of Carthage, when in his book On The Lapsed he wrote that the reason for the large numbers of apostates was that “conjugal unions are established with unbelievers; the members of Christ are offered to pagans”. Why then does this occur? Is the Orthodox faith really weaker than unbelief or some other false religion, since marriage to unbelievers has such lamentable consequences? The answer is that God does not help those who expressly violate His will. If we examine Holy Scripture, we will see that throughout practically the whole of sacred history God warns against mingling those faithful to Him with those who do not do His will. At the advent of the world we saw the supreme catastrophe of the Flood, caused when the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh (Gen. 6:2-3). It is traditionally understood that the sons of God were the descendants of Seth, those faithful to the Lord; that the daughters of men were the Canaanites women; and that the mingling of these two races led to the destruction of the ancient world. Remembering this frightful occurrence, St. Abraham made his servant swear to God that he would not take a wife for Isaac from among the daughters of Canaan (Gen. 24:3). Likewise, one of the reasons for Esau’s rejection was that he took Canaanite women to wife, who were a grief of mind to Isaac
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and Rebekah (Gen. 26:35), to the point that the latter said, I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth (Gen. 27:46). The law of God committed this standard to writing, [commanding that the idols and altars of the pagan be destroyed,] lest … thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods. (Ex. 34:15–16). For then so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly (Deut. 7:4). And indeed, this threat overtook those who violated the Lord’s commandment. Beginning with the crushing defeat at Baalpeor, when only the thrust of Phinehas’ spear ended the defeat in which 24,000 perished (Num. 25), and throughout the reign of the judges, when the Philistine woman Delilah brought about Samson’s demise (Judg. 16), and up to the terrible fall into sin of the most-wise King Solomon, whose heart was led astray by his wives (1 Kings 11:3), the battle continues for the keeping of this commandment. And God did not delay in punishing those who violated His command. Nor was this commandment in any way related to the idea of racial purity. Rahab the harlot, Moses’ wife Zipporah, and Ruth the Moabite all renounced their false gods and joined the people of God. This commandment was of particular importance for Saints Esdras and Nehemiah, who fought to keep the chosen people from mingling with foreigners (1 Esdras 9–10; Nehem.13:23–29). The Word of God calls