Mutual authority, seasonal abstinence, and marriage as gift (1 Cor 7)

to heal human weakness and to arrange the matters in those places most becomingly; therefore he said a due is owed from the husband and to the husband from the wife. Then, lest he shame those in marriage as being slaves of one another who must not come to the exercise of purity without agreement, he says: The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband; likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife. The husband therefore has authority over the wife’s body, and having authority, if he wishes, let him not use the authority; “but we did not use this right,” says the apostle, teaching this, I think, when he says: Do we not have a right to take along a sister as wife, as also the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? (1 Corinthians 9:5). Does the wife then have authority over the husband’s body and is she unable not to use the authority? The word “likewise” set twice gives us to understand that the husband must not think that in the matters of marriage he excels the wife; there is likeness and equality for those married toward one another.

Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a time, that you may have leisure for prayer, and be together again (1 Corinthians 7:5). You both ought to know that prayer from a man’s and a woman’s purity is not the same as prayer from intercourse. For if Greeks sometimes practice chastity before idols, how much more you who pray to the God of all? It is good, then, to condescend because of weakness, and to hold back because of prayers. Moses also purifies the people and says for three days not to approach a woman, that by having purified beforehand they may become hearers of God (Exodus 19:15). And in the Kingdoms, when Abathar or Ahimelech the priest wishes to set holy bread before David fleeing Saul’s plot, what does he say except: If the young men are clean from a woman?—not from a strange woman but from a wife (1 Samuel 21:4–5). Then, that someone may receive the bread of the Presence, he ought to be clean from a woman; but that he may receive the greater breads than the Presence, over which the name of God and of Christ and of the Holy Spirit has been invoked, how much more ought someone to be cleaner, that he may truly receive the breads unto salvation and not unto judgment?

Many think “deprive” is said only of gold or silver or something of that sort; but the apostle clearly named deprivation also concerning those in marriages who practice chastity unseasonably and without agreement. Once for all, simply, the one who does not render what is owed deprives the one to whom he owes by not rendering the due. Sometimes a person is shut in so that he cannot render two dues at once; therefore it is written that he may render the necessary due. What I mean will be clear thus: it is not possible both to render prayers to God as one ought and for the married man to render the due to the wife; therefore if the debt toward God presses, one must deprive the other. Hear him saying: Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a time, that you may have leisure for prayer and be together again—as if prayer sent up is not pure even for those who have come together, even if they have come together lawfully. One must also abstain from a woman in the time of her period, and it is counted a great charge to come together with a woman who is in her period. In Ezekiel’s catalog of brave deeds and of sins it is written that he will not approach a woman in her separation (Ezekiel 18:6). And one must be wholly pure also from one’s own wife in a time of prayer and fasting.

And again, he says, be together, lest Satan tempt you because of your lack of self-control. This I say by way of concession, not of command (1 Corinthians 7:5–6). Everywhere he loosens the word because of weakness, and again tightens it to turn the hearers. I wish all people to be as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one in this way and another in that (1 Corinthians 7:7). Marriage breathes of gift when the measures are kept—those of agreement. And one can truly say of some that for this one marriage is a gift, when there is no disorder, when there is all peace, all agreement. Yet to say that marriage of a believer with a Gentile woman, or of a Gentile with a believing woman, is a gift from God—this I would not say. For the gift of God cannot reach the Gentiles; if she believes, if she is saved, then she will begin to receive the gift.