1 Corinthians 7:14

“For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the brother; since otherwise were your children unclean; but now are they holy.”

The essential idea is that expressed by the word put at the head of the first and second proposition: ἡγίασται, is sanctified. The use of this term is no doubt occasioned by the fear which the Christian spouse might have of contracting defilement by remaining united to a heathen or Jewish spouse. So some interpreters have given the word a a purely negative, or, what amounts to nearly the same, a Levitical and ritual sense. Paul, it is said, means: marriage in this condition does not become an impure state, does not affect the Christian with defilement similar to that which was produced under the law by the touch of a dead body, for example. But this meaning, held by Rückert, as being purely negative, is too weak to correspond to the positive term ἡγίασται; and besides, resting on the theocratical idea of an external and ritual purity, it is not in keeping with the spirit of the New Testament. Others, with different shades, take this term as expressing the hope of sanctifying influence which the Christian spouse will in the end exercise over the heathen or Jewish spouse; so Olshausen: the Christian spirit will distil on him; de Wette, Neander: he will be placed under the beneficent influence of his spouse and of the Church. But the perfect ἡγίασται, has been put in a state of holiness, cannot designate a hoped-for result; and 1 Corinthians 7:16 precisely contradicts the certainty of such a result. Meyer and Reuss seek to evade these difficulties by making ἡγίασται here signify: “He is associated, affiliated to the Church by the conjugal bond which unites him to his spouse.” But do we not thus come back to the idea of a purely ceremonial holiness, a consecration wholly objective and external? Hofmann thinks that we must here abstract from all influence over the person of the non - Christian spouse, and apply the idea of holiness only to the bond between the two spouses, to their conjugal relation as such. This amounts to saying, as in the first interpretation, that such a union is pure for the two spouses. But if this idea had been that of Paul, he would have expressed it in a less involved way. To get at his thought in this verse, we must take account of the perfect passive and of the preposition ἐν, in. The latter indicates that the heathen or Jewish spouse has his holiness in the person of his spouse, and the perfect passive indicates that the communication of this holiness or consecration to God is regarded by Paul as already finished. As the believer is consecrated to God in the person of Christ, and as by faith in Him he gains his own consecration in His (see on 1 Corinthians 1:2), so the non-Christian spouse is sanctified in his Christian spouse by his consent to live with her. This consent is in his relation to his Christian spouse what faith is in the believer's relation to Christ. By consenting to live still with his spouse, the Jewish or heathen spouse also accepts her holy consecration and participates in it. Thus it is so long as he persists in this consent. The apostle of course reckons on the sanctifying influence of such a situation; but the use of the perfect and of the preposition ἐν, in, show that the point before him here is not strictly and above all that sanctifying influence, but the position of consecration in which the non - Christian spouse is at once placed by his determination to remain united to his Christian spouse.

Is this consecration of the one in the person of the other really tenable? Certainly; and the apostle proves it by an analogous moral fact and one universally admitted in the Church. The conjunction ἐπεί, since, is frequently used to mean: “since, if it were otherwise, this is what would happen” (da sonst, Passow); comp. for this meaning in the New Testament Romans 11:22: “since otherwise (that is to say, if thou persevere not) thou also shalt be cut off;” and in our own Epistle, 1 Corinthians 5:10 and 1 Corinthians 15:29: “since otherwise (if there be no resurrection), what shall they do...?” It is the same in profane Greek; comp. the numerous examples quoted by Passow. The ἄρα, then, announces an explanatory inference: “since if you refuse to acknowledge as true what I have just affirmed...” M. L'Hardy, in his book, Le baptême des enfants (1882), has disputed this universally admitted meaning of since otherwise, and has attempted to substitute for it the meaning, seeing that, considering that. The idea, according to him, is this: “Ye ought not to separate (1 Corinthians 7:13), first, because the unbeliever is sanctified in the believer (1 Corinthians 7:14 a); and next, from the consideration that, if separation takes place, your children, deprived of family life, will be impure; whereas, if you remain united, they will be holy.” We should thus have here a second reason to justify the μὴ ἀφιέτω, let her not put him away, of 1 Corinthians 7:13. But in this sense the connecting particle with what precedes would be not ἐπεί, but καὶ δέ, and moreover; then the ἐπεί, since, can in any case only bear on the verb which immediately precedes, ἡγίασται, is sanctified, twice repeated, and not on the remoter imperative of 1 Corinthians 7:13. It is in this case an argument whereby the apostle demonstrates the truth of the affirmation enunciated in the first part of the verse: he is sanctified.

The expression, your children, may be understood in two ways. It may be applied and it seems at first sight the most natural meaning only to children born of mixed marriages. So Chrysostom, Flatt, Bonnet, L'Hardy, and others. But from 1 Corinthians 7:12, Paul, in speaking of spouses placed in this condition, has used the third person. Why would he pass all at once to the second while addressing the same persons: τέκνα ὑμῶν, your children? Then would the argument have been conclusive? Would a mother, who doubted the consecration of her husband by means of her own faith, have admitted more easily the state of consecration belonging to her children by means of her maintaining that conjugal life of whose purity she was distrustful? It is therefore more probable that the expression, “ your children,” contains, as Beet says, “an appeal to all Christian parents.” Paul addresses them all (ὑμῶν, you) as present at the time when his letter is read in the congregation. The argument is this: “If it is a thing admitted by you all, that notwithstanding their original pollution, your children, who are not yet believers, are nevertheless already consecrated and holy in the eyes of God, and that in virtue of the bond which unites them to you, their parents, why would you make a difficulty about recognising also that an unbelieving husband may be regarded as consecrated to God in virtue of his union with his believing wife, and that by the fact of his desire to remain united to her?” So de Wette, Rückert, Olshausen, Neander, Meyer, Osiander, Hofmann, Heinrici, Edwards. By the form, since otherwise, this reasoning becomes an argument ad absurdum: “If you deny this participation of the non-Christian spouse in the consecration of the Christian spouse, you ought, if you are to be consequent, to declare your own children impure, to regard them as polluted beings, heathen children, which your Christian instinct refuses to believe.” To give more force to this reasoning, Paul changes the ἡγίασται, is sanctified, into ἅγιά ἐστιν, are holy. This second term is stronger than the first. The verb, in the perfect passive, indicated a position in which the subject is placed in the person of another, whereas the adjective ἅγια, holy, expresses a real quality inherent in the subject, though the latter has not yet any share in the act (faith) which seems to be its condition. Now if this characteristic is indisputable in the judgment of Christian feeling, with stronger reason ought the privilege designated above to be so.

The term ἀκάθαρτα, impure, here signifies: yet plunged, like children of heathen parents, in their natural impurity. The νῦν δέ, but now, brings out the contrast between the true, only tenable idea, and the absurd supposition conditionally stated.

But what exactly are we to understand by this word ἅγια, holy? If ἀκάθαρτα, unclean, cannot in this case designate either an external and ritual defilement, like those which were contracted under the Old Testament, or a personal moral defilement, since it is infants who are spoken of, and can only consequently apply to natural corruption; in like manner the word holy cannot designate here either a simply Levitical purity, for we are no longer under the Old Testament, or free and personal holiness, like that of regenerated believers. Is it possible then to discover an intermediate between these two alternatives? De Wette, Olshausen, Osiander, Neander, Edwards think that the reference is to the Christian influence of parents by means of their prayers, instructions, example (practical power, Edwards). But this explanation carries us to the future, and to a very uncertain future (see 1 Corinthians 7:16); whereas the verb ἐστί, are, denotes a real and present fact. The Reformers, from their viewpoint of absolute predestination, did not shrink from giving the fullest meaning to the word ἡγίασται. According to Calvin (Instit. 4.16, pp. 310-312), the children of Christians are holy from their birth, in consequence of supernatural grace. For this idea of the inward sanctification of the children of Christians from their birth, Beza substitutes that of their assured regeneration in consequence of their election. But it is not by denying liberty that any one will come to understand the notion of holiness in St. Paul. Calvin thinks of a holiness bestowed by supernatural grace on the children of Christians from their entrance into life. But do the facts confirm this theory? Others, like M. Ménégoz, explain the idea of the apostle by that of the solidarity and organic unity of the family. But does this law hold also in the spiritual domain? Hofmann understands, holy in the eyes of the parents, “who do not see the sin with which the child is born, but only the gift of God which they have received in the child.” But how can we discover here the meaning of the word holy? Bonnet and L'Hardy start from the use of this word, Romans 11:16: “If the root be holy, so are the branches;” and they think that as there remains in the family of Abraham, even when rejected, a predisposition to the service of God, so the blessed effects of the covenant of grace extend from Christian parents to their children, because these are “the fruits of a blessed union in God.” Here, then, we have “a natural holiness, one of position.” Beet, in an analogous sense, adduces the words, Exodus 29:37: “Whatsoever touches the altar of God shall be holy.” Children laid by the prayer of the parents on the altar of God become a holy thing; and so it is with the husband whom his Christian wife presents to God.

In my opinion there can be no doubt that the matter in question here is a transmitted grace, a consecration of the child to God resulting from the Divine offer of salvation under which it is put from its birth, whether it afterwards accept or reject it. But even in this case the assertion, are holy, still seems extravagant. There is something so firm and precise about it, that one involuntarily seeks a positive fact on which to support it. Certainly, since it is children and non-believers who are in question, it is allowable to hold by a notion of holiness which approaches that of the Old Testament; but in this sense the need of an external objective fact, to account for such a declaration, makes itself the more felt. This fact can only be, as it seems to me, the baptism of the Corinthian children in regard to whom the apostle expresses himself so categorically. No doubt the gravest German commentators find in this very saying an indisputable proof against the practice of infant baptism in the Churches founded by Paul. “If,” it is said, “Christian children had been already introduced into the Church by baptism, their position would no longer have any analogy to that of the heathen spouses of whom St. Paul speaks in the first part of this verse, and he could not logically conclude from the former to the latter. His argument is valid only in so far as both alike lie outside at once of faith and baptism.” But this objection rests on the idea that baptism is here regarded by Paul as the principle of the holiness ascribed by him to the children of Christians. From this point of view it would indeed differ totally from that which Paul, by his is sanctified (1 Corinthians 7:14 a), can allow to non-Christian spouses. But if Paul regards the baptism of those children, not as the source, but as the proof of the fact, the seal of their state of holiness, the whole thing is changed. He means, not that they are holy because of their baptism, but that their baptism was the sign and proof of the fact of their state of holiness. And whence, then, arises this holiness which rises superior in them from their birth over natural corruption, and which rendered them fit to receive baptism, though they had not yet personal faith? As Jewish children did not become children of Abraham by circumcision, but as it was descent from their parents, children of Abraham, which made them fit to receive circumcision, so it is with the children of Christians. Their consecration to God does not depend on their baptism; but their fitness for baptism arises from the solidarity of life which unites them to their parents, and through them to the covenant of grace founded in Christ, and in which these live. Until Christian children decide freely for or against the salvation which is offered to them, they enjoy the benefit of this provisional situation, and are placed with all belonging to the family in communication with the holy forces which animate the body of Christ. And this is a state superior, though analogous, to that of the non-Christian spouse, who, in virtue of keeping up his union with his Christian wife, is not himself received into the covenant (ἅγιος, holy), but yet regarded as destined to enter into it (ἡγιασμένος, sanctified, consecrated, in the person of his wife, a member of the Church). If this second result were impossible, the first would be still more so.

Infant Baptism, in relation to the passage, 7:14.

German commentators are almost unanimous (except Hofmann, who here follows a way of his own) in regarding infant baptism as incompatible with these words of the apostle. The latest English critics (Edwards, Beet), though knowing the German works, do not adhere to the conclusion drawn in them, and do not believe the words to be incompatible with the ecclesiastical practice of baptizing infants. For my part, I do not find Paul's expressions intelligible except on the supposition that this practice existed.

In his interesting and able work already quoted, Professor Ménégoz has proposed an intermediate way. According to him, when Paul baptized whole families, Jewish or heathen (Acts 16:15; Acts 16:33; Acts 18:8; 1 Corinthians 1:16), it is indisputable that the children were included. But 1 Corinthians 7:14 proves, he thinks, on the other hand, that in Christian families the children born after the baptism of the parents did not receive it themselves, which M. Ménégoz explains by supposing that their baptism was regarded as included in that of their parents. They were looked on “as baptized in the womb of their mother.” It was not, according to him, till later and gradually that baptism was extended to the children of Christians themselves, because this rite being the mode of enlisting into the Church, it could not in course of time be refused to the descendants of Christians without effacing the line of demarcation between them and the world.

This hypothesis, intended to reconcile the two classes of passages, which M. Ménégoz thinks he finds in the New Testament, seems to me inadmissible. According to it, there were in Paul's Churches two classes of Christians: the one baptized, those who had passed from heathenism or Judaism to Christianity; the other unbaptized (except in the person of their parents), those who were born of parents already Christian. But where in the New Testament is there a trace of such a difference? Does not the apostle say: “We all (ὅσοι, as many as there are) who were baptized in Christ...?” The same expression, Galatians 4:27, and in our own Epistle, 1 Corinthians 12:13: “We all (ἡμεῖς πάντες) were baptized into one Spirit to form one body.” These expressions show that baptism was regarded as the external bond of all the members of the body of which the Spirit was the soul. And why, if M. Ménégoz' supposition was well founded, was not the baptism of children born of parents not yet Christian regarded as involved in that of their parents, as well as that of the infants born after their conversion, unless we are prepared to ascribe to the Church, and to Paul himself, the most grossly materialistic ideas? Has not M. Ménégoz himself very properly reminded us of the fact that, according to the notions of antiquity, the father's religion determined that of the family? His personal baptism should therefore have sufficed for all in the one situation as well as in the other. Finally, I think I have shown that the passage, 1 Corinthians 7:14, in favour of which so strange a hypothesis is proposed, not only does not require, but excludes it.

But does not ecclesiastical history protest against our exegetical result as false? With the exception of two passages, the one from Origen, the other from Tertullian, it is silent on the point before us. Now, of these two passages, that of Origen is positive in favour of the apostolic origin of infant baptism (Comment. in epist. ad Rom. t. 5.9): “The Church learned from the apostles that it ought to give baptism to infants.” In the second, Tertullian, after his going over to Montanism (De baptismo, c. 18), dissuades parents from baptizing their children; which proves that the practice existed in his time, but that Tertullian himself did not regard it as apostolical. These facts are insufficient, from the historical point of view, to authorize a sure conclusion either on the one side or the other. It is therefore for exegesis to enlighten history rather than the reverse.

The apostle now passes to the opposite case, that of the Christian spouse whose heathen partner does not consent to live with her.