RevExp 74:1 (Winter 1977)

Biblical Perspectives on the Single Person

Frank Stagg

The “single person” is understood here as the unmarried adult, whether never married, widowed, or divorced. As such the subject is largely an un-plowed field in biblical study. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, for example, has only a non-article on celibacy, one expression among others of the single life: “CELIBACY.” Celibacy is unknown in the Bible, with the possible exception of Paul (1 Cor. 7:8).1 By contrast, the New Catholic Encyclopedia devotes nine pages to two articles on the subject: “Canon Law of Celibacy” and “History of Celibacy,” III, 366–74. Celibacy has had a major place in the Roman Church for many centuries and is now being debated intensely within that communion. In Protestantism, where marriage has been more nearly normative for clergy as well as for laymen, little scholarly attention has been given to celibacy or the larger subject of the single person. The Roman Church is currently compelled to reassess the role of marriage for its ministry and may well reexamine biblical perspectives and the early practice in the church, where marriage was normative but not exclusive. Protestantism is currently compelled to reasses the option for the single life alongside marriage. Such re-evaluation of the single life in this essay is in no sense to imply the devaluation of marriage. The concern is to see each in its own right.

It has been noted that there is no word for “bachelor” in the Bible,2 although some direct attention is given “virgins” (female everywhere except possibly in 1 Cor. 7:25ff. and in an apparently figurative sense in Rev. 14:4). Even though the subject of the single person is not discussed as such in the Bible, it thrusts itself upon us by the growing number of unmarried adults in the churches. Aspects of the subject do appear biblically, and considerable light comes from related subjects.

This investigation has not found compelling evidence to support some widely-held understandings. Where, for example, is it explicit and unam-

RevExp 74:1 (Winter 1977) p. 6

biguous that a Jewish priest must be married or that a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin must be married? What about marriage and celibacy at Qumran? Which was normative and which exceptional? What about John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul? Is there explicit and unambiguous evidence with respect to the “marital status” of these and many others prominent in Old and New Testaments?3 Assumptions come easier than demonstrations, and the whole subject of the single person may be more open in the Bible than in the minds of many of its readers. It may be a surprise to many that the marital status of biblical characters is so often a non-agenda item.

In biblical perspective marriage is divinely ordained and apparently normative for the human race.4 Alongside this basic pattern is a strong and significant tradition in which single persons appear, including those of such stature as Jeremiah ...