“Grace is freely given. No one has a right to anything.” This seems to be the most important teaching for anyone committed not only to one’s marriage but also one’s membership in Christ’s living body, the Church.

I only scanned it, but have printed the five pages for further review.  Thanks for the link.

Kendall, thanks for this. I didn’t know who George Morelli was, nor the context of the PDF, but it’s a great, sound, needed, biblical article on marriage. Many thanks for posting.

Kendall, not only the article in question but others (eg on evangelising in Indiana State Prison) were thought-provoking and illuminating.  Might I enter a caveat about the marriage article?  The counsel on spouses not seeking justice, not always wanting things to be how they perceive they should be, was well given.  Yet I wondered about making this a keynote of marriage.  There are fundamental issues of philosophy coming into the picture here.  Orthodox theology is greatly influenced by Platonism, which views movements of emotion as evidence of imperfection, and in spirituality values what in the Eastern tradition is called apatheia - not apathy, but a kind of equanimity, being well centered.  My difficulty here is that there are times when, perhaps, we should be moved, disturbed, upset.  I hesitate to say it, but without this, we move too far down the road towards Stepford Wives.  The western tradition, in contrast, has been far more influenced by Aristotle, and the belief that negotiation, compromise and pragmatism is essential if we are to live the virtues.  Plato sees perfection as unchanging;  Aristotle prefers to see human beings as able to work things out and attain to the ideal through their inherent abilities.

Thanks Terry, for reminding me just how ignorant I am  

Seriously, now I’m going to have to go back and look this, both because I find this sort of thing inherently interesting, but also because I am finding myself attracted to the orthodox churches, but am finding more and more how different they can be from those of the West.

I wholeheartedly agree with #4 Terry Tee, and I would go on to say that a substantial feature of the post-Christian/post-Modern West is lack of agreement about the very issues that this article suggests is fundamental to a good marriage. In a pluralistic environment (which often include marriages) we need methods to speak across world-views, not demand agreement (or capitulation) from the very parties that are at loggerheads about who is in the right.

Thomas Aquinas (building on Aristotle) offers such a method. Thomas viewed sins as “transgressions against reason.” He said sins are caused by confusing a particularly less important desire for something that is truly the best for us.  He advised that a remedy for sin is deliberation with others about who is in the right. Which is a nice way of saying that he encouraged argument. The method that Thomas proposes for deliberating with opponents is embodied in the entirety of the Summa Theologiae. I’m sure many marriages would be strengthened by using his method for resolving conflict.