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Document Details : Title: Theological Perspectives on Marriage in Postmodern Times Author(s): MIGGELBRINK, Ralf Journal: Marriage, Families & Spirituality Volume: 14 Issue: 1 Date: 2008 Pages: 44-52 DOI: 10.2143/INT.14.1.2031554 Abstract : In postmodern times, the modern claim that all people construct their own lives has become strictly individual. Neither nature nor the Enlightenment’s universal rationality seem to give the grounding for a common theology of marriage. But the basic biblical call for justice and love still grounds those who interpret their marriage as a spiritual way to participate in God’s hope for humanity. God reveals himself as love. Therefore the lifelong care of one human for another in marital constancy can be regarded as a way that humans become conformed to the inner life of God. In a profound way, marriage is sacramental because it symbolizes God’s helping and transformative love for the married couple in a way that makes this love real and visible. The carnal character of marriage thereby finds divine acceptance through the mystery of Christ’s incarnation, if incarnation is understood as the divine act of accepting and transforming a reality totally external to God. The earnest reference to the other, which God himself embodies in the incarnation and which married people embody in their alliance, contains a meaningful correction of postmodern individuality. Postmodernity rejects the opaque modern individual and defends the importance of otherness. Marriage in postmodern times can be interpreted as an impulse to discover an intersubjective understanding of humanity. It offers participation in an inter-subjective way of shaping individuality. Marriage may then be discovered as a revelation of God’s own inter-subjectivity. |
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