In his song “Could it Be,” Michael Card sings: ”Could it be that questions tell us more than answers ever do?” I often think so. So I am starting a new category as a place marker for me to pose questions that I think can lead to interesting reflections.
First up: What if Adam had told Eve not to eat the fruit and she had anyway?
It might be interesting to speculate on the outcomes, but I think it’s more interesting to speculate on the possibility. I do not think this would have been possible. I think in some mystical way that was lost after the Fall Adam and Eve were truly one. It is important in today’s secular climate for Christians to remember that God instituted marriage before the Fall.
This is one reason why I believe the Catholic rational for marriage as a sacrament is not convincing. Marriage was instituted before there was a need for sacraments. All things were sacred. Though I am Protestant and accept only two sacraments, even if one accepts the other 4 sacraments that Catholics have (not including marriage), I could not see the rational for including marriage.
One could argue that the other six–Baptism, Eucharist, Confirmation, Penance, Anointing the Sick and Holy Orders–were instituted ”by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us.” I don’t believe but two of them were, but God instituted marriage before there was any need for any “means of grace.” God designed us for marriage and for families.
Before there was the need for a Savior, before there was a need for the Church, before there was a purpose for sacraments, when God and mankind dwelt in harmony and all things were sacred, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
Marriage between a man and a woman was part of God’s original design for creation. Had there never been a Fall, there would be no Baptism, but marriage would remain. The most would could argue is that it is an attempted recovery of God’s original plan, but I’m not sure I would find that convincing.
Follow up when you get a chance with why is marriage a symbol of the Church? God a husband in Jer. Paul in eph 5. Hosea. concept of one but other. Marriage as the only God pleasing sexual relationship. The only mention of a committed relationship for a reason, and there must be something very profound and mysterious both about why God chose to use it so often as a metaphor.