The Metaphysics of Marriage

What in the world causes marriage? It is, without a doubt, the most unlikely human institution, considering what human beings are. To be bound for life to a fallen, messed-up, moody creature like oneself ― what could cause such a thing? Single people think of it in terms of the good things. There is, of course, sex. But that phase comes and goes very quickly. There is warmth and caring and affection; but those things are sparse among smothering, nagging, abrasive behavior and words. There is more common sense in divorce than there is in marriage, it seems.

So why do human beings still get married? Why is it something worth pursuing for so many billions of people, around the world and throughout history? Why are so many homosexuals now willing to forget the liberated life for sake of monogamy? What is it in the human soul that still inclines us toward such a thing ― and what does it mean when we don't?

David Goldman (formerly "Spengler") has a wonderful piece on The Square about the inner meaning of marriage. It is, of course, a principle that people always understood, until quite recently: marriage and family were the same thing as salvation. For the ancients, they were precisely the same thing: the longing for wholeness with another feels like something eternal; and, of course, leaving behind others like oneself in children is like living on as oneself. Sex is not perfectly eternal, nor are children really oneself. But it is the closest we come to salvation short of soul-saving.

But Goldman offers a different way to think about it. It isn't that marriage is a reflection of eternity; it is instead because of our view of eternal things that we do it. This is especially clear in our times.

When we cease to hope in eternal life, we no longer marry and no longer have children. That is the terrible lesson that the triumph of secularism has taught us. In industrial countries where atheism triumphed in the form of communism, fertility rates have fallen to levels barely half of replacement. The fertility of Eastern Europe in 2005 was only 1.25 children per woman, according to the United Nations Population Prospects. Japan stood at 1.3. In secular Western Europe it was 1.6. In industrial countries where most people profess some form of religious faith, however, fertility remains at replacement levels or above. America's fertility in 2005 stood at 2.1, and Israel's at 2.9.

2 percent is, of course, the bottom line. There must be at least two kids per parent, or else a nation simply folds in half, and then half of that in another generation, and quickly breeds itself out of existence.

There is, of course, a perfect parallel for this, albeit one that moves in reverse. A baby comes into existence out of nothing. It is the best expression of love, in its greatest sense, as something creative ― not so much human love, since babies can be made without an ounce of love involved. It is, of course, God's love ― His creation ex nihilo that makes a new thing. It falls to the parents to love it the rest of the way (or not).

But the thing to see is this: just as we come into being out of nothing by God's love, so too do we sink back into nothing, by our own will, by refusing Him.

These observations suggest that when we talk about nature and marriage, it is a peculiarly human nature that is at work. It is not the nature of some of the other mammals to breed in captivity; it is not the nature of homo sapiens to breed in the absence of the hope of eternal life.

This sort of despair is not necessarily the same thing as sorrow. People in these industrialized countries are, no doubt, plenty jovial; life is good, and rich, and abundant in comforts and amusements. Those in Europe or Japan where the populations are taking such a dive live in tremendous abundance. Yet it is the abundance stored up from previous decades of human capital. Those benefits are sure to decline when the last generation is whittled down, as the hands that would care for it in its old age are denied existence.

It's easy to see, though, how the truth appears in our private lives. This is perhaps the single greatest mark of the modern individual: his destiny is his own; her body is her own; their union with each other is only a contract, where both parties join for the sake of what can be gotten out of it. "What's in it for me?" It is a condition that caters to the smallness of soul, the absolute self-obsessed, practically self-worshiping tendency that we see everywhere. It never occurs to us, though, that our denial of the gift of self of marriage is a symptom of our denial of salvation. Goldman writes:

The first principle of Augustine's anthropology, that we are made for God and restless until we come to him, coheres well with what we observe in societies that abandon God. Our restlessness in that terminal case can reach levels that tear us to pieces.

We fool ourselves if we think that "resting in Him," as Augustine put it, is something easy, at least in terms of getting there. The sort of salvation that Augustine meant ― and most Christians, until very recently ― was not a free pass. Forgiveness of sins was not the final word, nor was it the complete condition of salvation. It was only the beginning of being "ordered to an end": we must be in a certain condition to come near to the One ― a condition that we are certainly not in simply as we are.

To make salvation on earth has long been the aim of human social projects, and it certainly still is today. The State, as we know it in modern times, is based entirely on the assumption that human beings live once, and then die ― and that it is a complete delusion to think that there is anything beyond this world.

It is entirely possible to devise other means of perpetuating the species than marriage, for example, the collective raising of children as in Plato's dystopia and the various attempts to realize some of its features. But none of them has taken, not even for short periods of time. They have no interest for human beings. It is not only that people want to raise their own children, rather than the state's children: Without the expectation of eternal life within a faith community, mating couples do not evince interest in reproducing at replacement levels.

That has always been the lesson of totalitarian regimes: the human soul always looks beyond the here and now. The more we try to make ourselves whole in this world ― a task that always involves tremendous weight and pressure and diligent suppression of the human soul ― the more miserable we become.

And yet that same impulses proceeds, even when there is no totalitarian state to make it happen. It is doubtful that we will see such monsters like the antibellum South or Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union ever again. Yet the same impulse is in us: we must become perfectly at home in this world; we must try and try, no matter how unhappy we become. We have to convince ourselves that questions like "are you happier?" are meaningless ― or that our emphatic "yes!" can be based on the amount of radical freedom we have, however aimless it leaves us. All of this, though, boils down to our inner attitude toward marriage, and what it means.

This may be the first time in Western history in which the sacred foundation of society, whose irreducible fundamental unit is the family, faces explicit opposition. If militant secularism succeeds in banishing the sacred from social life, we will lose heart and perish, as the tragic victims of communism are perishing. There is nothing to be done for the infertile, aging peoples of the former Soviet empire. The best thing one can do for them is not to be like them. Secular Western Europe already has one foot in the demographic grave. If we lose the sacred in the United States, we will follow them into Sheol. We might as well make a stand now over the sacred character of marriage, because there is nowhere to fall back from here.

That is the question that is never asked: suppose we get everything we want ― then what? What is achieved through, say, a no-fault divorce, or a no-guilt act of adultery, or any other form of no-consequence behavior? Where does all the progress end? There is only one possible answer: when we have successfully destroyed ourselves. Worldly salvation is not the "invention of happiness," as Nietzsche's last man though. It is to render ourselves nothing.