Celibacy and marriage as indifferent; remain in your calling (1 Cor 7)

this also here he names a slave the one called after marriage, and free the unmarried. What is said about circumcision and about slaves is therefore said with a view to the place. Yet it is not out of place sometimes to use the saying against those who think after the faith one must be circumcised from a reverence—yet a reverence not according to knowledge—because of what is written in the old covenant about circumcision. Again it is not good, because of certain ones from circumcision who believe and think circumcision brings them shame and wish to draw a foreskin, to use the saying that says: Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised. And there is reason to say to such that in itself circumcision is a matter of indifference. So now it is neither about circumcision nor about uncircumcision, but about the unmarried and the married: Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised—as if he were saying: Let him not draw a wife; he has already been circumcised; he put away a wife; let him not marry another. Was anyone called in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised—as if: You were called in marriage; do not put away your wife. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing. Since some think the unmarried has something more in this respect than the married, and the married something less than the unmarried by the very fact of having married, we wish, he says, to teach that in its own account celibacy is indifferent and in its own account marriage is indifferent. For the one who is unmarried and truly pure from every mixture, yet living badly in other ways, may gain no benefit from celibacy; and someone in marriage, doing the things of marriage in order and season, keeping the rest of the way of life, may be no less than the unmarried. That celibacy itself and purity itself are indifferent we will prove thus. If only those from the church practiced celibacy, one might say that celibacy in its own account is something pure and divine; but now one can find also those unmarried with a base intention. Those from Marcion also practice celibacy and purity, but not as the church’s people do; for these do so to please the God who created the world, those so as not to cooperate with the god of the world. Celibacy is adorned by an ecclesiastical life and word, by pure knowledge and truth. So also the unmarried is indifferent in his own account; and it is possible also for one in marriage to be without blame, as we have already given. Circumcision then is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, both according to the wording and according to what is set before us. But what is it that saves? Keeping God’s commandments. For everyone who looses one of these least commandments and teaches people so—he did not say will not enter the kingdom of the heavens but will be called least in the kingdom of the heavens (Matthew 5:19). And if the one who loosed one of the least commandments will be called least in the kingdom of the heavens, where will the one who loosed two commandments be found? Let each therefore remain in the calling in which he was called. Were you called in marriage? Do not envy the unmarried. Were you called unmarried? Do not by all means draw a foreskin, if you are able to live more purely.

Were you called a slave? Do not be concerned about it; but if you are also able to become free, rather use it. For the one called in the Lord as a slave is the Lord’s freedman; likewise the one called free is Christ’s slave. You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of human beings. Brothers, let each remain with God in that in which he was called (1 Corinthians 7:21–24). He named a slave of necessity the married man; for the husband is a slave of the wife, not having authority over his own body, and the wife of the husband; for she does not have authority over her own body, but the husband. Were you called a slave? Do not be concerned about it; but if you are also able to become free, rather use it—that is, if you are not transgressing according to the Word, you are able to be free; how? By agreement, that you may have leisure for prayer with all concord. For the one