5 - Marriage and the family
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
Martin Luther became a family man, and he wanted everyone else to be situated similarly. He saw one of his primary targets as the celibate life of the Catholic clergy and nuns. He rhetorically took aim at it over and over again, across the span of his career. Celibacy could lead to no good, he reiterated, but only to fornication and social disorder. He attacked Catholic vows on two primary grounds, both Biblical. First, God had ordained marriage as His first estate when He created Eve out of Adam's rib and brought her to him; this presentation constituted the first wedding. Second, in order to ensure the propagation of the human race, He had – one must assume after the Fall – implanted in Adam and Eve, and in their progeny down through the ages, an irresistible sexual desire that found no other release than through sexual acts. The only such acts that accorded with God's plan for reproduction were potentially generative ones between wife and husband. All others He condemned.
The perpetuation of the species and the channeling of the sex drive were primary reasons for marriage, but others were close behind. Wives and husbands shared the burden of work, their proper spheres complementing each other. The Reformer was adamant concerning men's proper activities in the public arena and women's adherence to the home.
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- Luther on WomenA Sourcebook, pp. 88 - 136Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003