Word: bainton
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
According to Professor Roland H. Bainton of Yale University Divinity School, Christianity has taken three principal views of marriage-the sacramental, the romantic and the companionable. In the current issue of the quarterly Religion in Life, Dr. Bainton, a Congregationalist, sets all three attitudes in their historical perspective, which indicates that the modern,' "romantic" view is the least Christian...
...Hath Joined . . ." Dr. Bainton finds the sacramental conception of marriage best grounded in the New Testament. Jesus sanctified marriage by His first miracle at Cana. And Christ said: ". . . What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." Saint Paul, however, urged Christians who were unmarried to stay single. Marriage, he believed, was only for those in whom the temptation to sin was too strong...
Cult of Adultery. Romance, even within the bonds of wedlock, was looked at askance by the early Christians. Writes Historian Bainton: "Women were strongly exhorted not to make themselves attractive." Virginity was highly prized by the more pious counselors. Saint Jerome expatiated on the difficulties and disadvantages of matrimony. But the great Saint Augustine, with a more moderate view of marriage ethics, set the basis of Roman Catholic teaching today...
According to Professor Bainton: "Marriage, said Augustine, is good. Sex as such is not evil. But the purpose of sex is propagation, and anything in excess of that intent is evil. It is an evil, however, from which no married couple is ever free . . . That which outside of marriage is a mortal sin, within marriage is but a venial sin, provided no artificial device is used to prevent offspring...
...Bainton attributes the rise of romantic love to reaction against the Church's austerity. The "cult of adultery," with its emphasis on courtship, began during the Renaissance to romanticize the institution of marriage itself. According to Dr. Bainton, the modern idea of falling in love before marriage often has "the unhappy and unnecessary corollary that if romantic attachment wanes marriage should be terminated...