In recent decades however a number of writers have argued that "contract" is an overly narrow and legalistic term, and they suggest that "covenant" more adequately expresses what marriage is.122 The term "covenant" was used in the discussion of marriage by the Second Vatican Council123 and in canon #1055, which introduces the section on marriage in the 1983 Revised Code of Canon Law. When recent Church documents use the term to describe marriage, it is to the biblical notion of covenant that they refer.124 It is one of the principal concepts used to explain the relation of God to Israel. Furthermore, this relationship between God and Israel frequently is described in terms of marriage.125 St. Paul does not introduce an entirely new line of thought, accordingly, when he compares the relation of husband and wife to the relation of Christ to the Church. In the Old Testament prophets, human marriage is used to explain the relationship of God to Israel; and the prophet Malachy (2:14) refers to the husband-wife relationship as a covenant. Paul holds up the divine love as a model for the human reality. The application of the biblical notion of covenant to marriage finds its New Testament justification especially in Paul's comparison of marriage with the covenantal relationship of Christ to the Church. Clearly, there are aspects of the covenant between God and Israel, and also of the New Covenant, which are absent from the spousal union. In particular, God is infinitely above 122
See, for example, Palmer, P.J., "Christian marriage, contract or covenant?" Theological Studies 33(1972) 617-665. Palmer states that marriage was commonly called a covenant during the first Christian millennium, and that it is only during the last six centuries or so that marriage has been called a contract. 123
Paragraph 48 of Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World) states: "It (the intimate partnership of married life and love) is rooted in the conjugal covenant of irrevocable personal consent." (Quoted from The Documents of Vatican II, Walter M. Abbott, S.J., ed., London-Dublin, Geoffrey Chapman, 1966.) The text preserves the traditional teaching that marriage comes into existence through the consent of the partners, although what is brought about by this consent is called a covenant rather than a contract. 124
See Palmer, op. cit. Palmer gives a readable and, I think, valid argument for applying the biblical notion of covenant to marriage, although I don’t agree with every conclusion in his article. The biblical notion of covenant has been studied by so many scholars that citing references regarding to the general notion seems superfluous. Walter Eichrodt’s two-volume Theology of the Old Testament, Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1967, shows how the idea of covenant is a key to understanding much of the Hebrew Scriptures. 125 See Palmer, op.cit., and Synan, Edward, "The covenant of husband and wife" The Bridge: Judaeo Christian Studies 4(1958) 149-170, esp. pp. 150-152.
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