BETROTHAL

Rev. HUGO LJ. ODHNER

The written Word is the Holy Covenant between God and mankind. It is a covenant of love, since love alone can conjoin life to life. And because of this, the pages of Scripture abound with references to marriage, to that human relation wherein the elusive spirit of love comes into its own, to find its freedom and its fruition, its noblest and most lasting expression, and its refuge from disdain and envy and misunderstanding.

The Word of God is a covenant of love in which the Lord likens Himself to a bridegroom betrothing himself to a virgin; and the Church is therefore called a "Bride," and those who are of the Church are called "wedding guests," and sometimes "virgins," who greet the approaching bridegroom. The comparison is intentionally loosely woven, because no human relationships can fully describe the conjunction of the Lord with the Church. Still, it is impossible for man to understand the love of God except in terms of human experience. Only those who understand what human love is, in its essence, can perceive something of the quality of the Divine love.

The Doctrine states that "the essence of love is to love others outside of itself, to will to be one with them and to make them happy from itself." (T C R 42) This is true of love among men, and it is true of the Divine love. These three essentials must all be present in all true love. Essentially, love is a forgetfulness of self. It desires to give, to spend itself on others, to hold nothing back for itself. Essentially, too, love yearns for conjunction—for a union with others, and a reciprocation of its own affections in a common bond of mutual endeavors. Yet, in this conjunction, love does not compel, does not look for its own happiness, but essentially it regards the freedom of others,—a freedom through which others can be partakers of selfless love and be made happy through this love itself. For happiness is possible only where there is freedom.

The desire to be loved is deeply lodged in every human heart. It is like a yearning hunger for comfort and appreciation, for ministrations and praise. If this be love, every man has it. Yet such a desire for love from others for the enhancement of one's own delight—may lead to separation and hatred rather than conjunction. For it exacts rewards from others, and looks to self. It is a desire to feel pleasure in others so far as they contribute to ones own joys—as we might "love" an entertainer on the stage, or even a comfortable garment or a savory dish.

The test of genuine love, therefore, is in its desire for a free and uncompelled reciprocation. To love means to feel the joy of another as joy in oneself, to wish for conjunction only so far as such conjunction is freely desired by the other. Love is barren—is a mere parody, a graven image—as long as there is no free reciprocation, but only an imagined reciprocation, or a merely external compliance which satisfies only in appearance and is liable to disillusionment. (D L W 47, 48)

This, then, is an obvious cause of many tragedies in human life,—that self-love parades as love of others, and seeks to compel others to serve its own delights. For self-love fails to respect the freedom of the neighbor and to rejoice in his joy. Self-love can evoke nothing except an apparent reciprocation. In itself it wishes to dominate and possess, not to serve and give.

But where love is genuine and true, there is also the desire to be loved in return, and to be conjoined with others through mutual services, mutual affections, mutual perceptions of truth and of use, and mutual delights. The blessedness, the sweetness and joyousness of love are attained through such a conjunction, and especially where there is the promise of perpetuity therein. If our love be genuine, it will patiently await the time when its labors and its offered gifts are appreciated and reciprocated.

Love takes many forms in the manifold situations and on the various planes of human life. Essentially it is always the same. Always it seeks to give of its own, to be conjoined with others, and to look to an increase of happiness among them. But nowhere can it come into its fullness except in the state of marriage, which is the union of one man and one woman—a state ordained from the beginning as the focal point and foundation of human uses. For, even as the Divine love of the Lord looked to others outside of itself, and thus created mankind upon which to bestow its blessings, so there is an image of creation in the uses of marriage, where human loves—celestial, spiritual, and natural—may all be centered. Marriage is therefore the seminary or seed-plot of the human race, the source of offspring both natural and spiritual.

Because such a use as the procreation and raising of tender infants cannot be adequately commenced without a guarantee of good faith that it will be completed, and because marriage unalterably changes the state of life of those who enter it, marriage is called a "covenant." It is indeed a holy covenant appointed by the Lord the Creator: for it is essentially His use that is being carried out by married partners or parents. It is a covenant with the Lord, as well as a covenant between the two partners. It is a covenant which looks to the eternal uses of heaven, for which parents must prepare the children who have been given then.

But marriage inmostly involves a procreation of spiritual offspring also. Such offspring are the mutual states of wisdom and love which are born in the course of their life together, and which unite them by conjugial love, more fully and intimately to eternity, and enable them to perform spiritual uses to their fellow men and fellow angels. Such spiritual offspring can be born only where there is a union of minds and of spirits between the two partners.

For, just as natural offspring need protection and security and tender care, under the aegis of the marriage covenant, so also do spiritual procreations require the shelter of an intimate confidence and an understanding trust, which is possible where two lives have joined together—with a common goal—to share the same destiny, and face the same problems, and taste the same delights. Mutual confidence, inmost friendship, and selfless patience, form the womb wherein the sensitive and delicate beginnings of new spiritual states can be nurtured into hesitant life, and then take perceptible form in new understandings and in new uses. But they must be conceived from spiritual ideals, from the principles of heavenly truths,—truths from the Word of Divine Revelation, rationally seen as the guide of life.

No marriage is real in the sight of heaven which does not or cannot bring forth such spiritual offspring. And in order that genuine marriage—the marriage of a love truly conjugial and truly conjunctive may be reestablished among men, the Lord, in the Writings of the New Church, has revealed the manner in which it may be sought.

The essential of marriage is consent. Such as is the consent, such is the marriage—the conjunction. If, in the consent, there is a reservation, this, too, will appear in the marriage. If there is a consent only to a physical union, and to a mutual enjoyment of the social advantages of a home, the marriage will look to the world and to self, and will contain the seeds of its own dissolution for "the world passeth away and the lust thereof." But if the consent is a consent to a spiritual union, a striving for common enlightenment in a mutual desire to serve God and fellow men in uses of charity, then the marriage will look to heaven and to the Lord, and will contain within it the seed and promise of eternal life. And this promise will be within all the temporal uses which shall flow from that marriage; for they will all look to a spiritual end, and to interior blessings which age cannot decrease.

Because this is so, because the essential of every marriage is contained in the consent, which determines what ends and purposes shall rule in the marriage, therefore the Writings, in the work on Conjugial Love, give many reasons why the consent to marriage should be strengthened and confirmed by a solemn betrothal, to take place some time before the nuptials, so that the state signified by the betrothal may be entered into and established on its own basis. By the betrothal the man becomes a bridegroom," and the woman his "bride," and both look forward to the wedding as an event planned and prepared for. (C L 301)

The reasons why the betrothal should be marked by a sacred but intimate rite, at which a priest administers the blessing of the Lord, are manifold. The intentions of the future partners are thereby assumed as a thing of conscience, as a new relationship, not only to each other, but also to the Lord. It is an acknowledgment that the loves which enter into a true marriage are derived not from the man, nor from the woman, but from the Lord, and that it is to Him that they must look, if these loves are to be established and preserved. For conjugial love, which alone can make a true marriage, is not the same as that love of the sex which men have in common with the brutes. It is not a refined and controlled love of the sex, regulated by civil law, and—as matrimony—condoned by society.

Conjugial love, first of all, regards marriage as a holy institution. And holiness comes from the Lord, from heaven, and from religion. If faith in the Lord, and the desire for heavenly states of love and charity, and an affection of spiritual truths, are not present in the marriage, it can be called holy' only in name. And further, conjugial love desires and hopes that the marriage be eternal; and it labors to make it such, striving for a unity of spiritual life, as well as a consociation in the common interests of the world and the home. It strives for spiritual uses, such as that of guiding the minds of the children towards heaven, and the support and furtherance of the church, which by its uses looks to the salvation of souls. It regards the state of marriage as a training ground where we practice to do the spiritual uses of charity which, in the other world, shall determine our abodes, together or apart.

The period of betrothal is therefore intended to allow conjugial love to "proceed and grow up from its spiritual origin in just order." It is a period wherein the interior affections may be mutually known, the inner hopes and ideals of life interpreted and seen in a common light, the spirits of the two entering into a spiritual marriage while ever new facets of character are explored and revealed in the inward joy and optimism of a mutual love.

But the Writings note that conjugial love ascends and descends. It climbs to the heavens, and it comes down to the earth. The practical aspects of the common life of partners are dwelt upon but vaguely in the rose-hued days of betrothal. With marriage, the delights of bodily conjunction and the concerns of ultimate uses come as a descent to earth. And with this begins the real test of conjugial love. For the doctrine reveals that conjugial love is of such a quality in its descent as it is in the height to which it ascends. (C L 302) If it has not ascended into the purifying light of heaven, into the heights of spiritual idealism and noble resolve, it descends into the body unchaste. For the lower parts of the mind cleave to the body. But if the love ascends into spiritual things, it will also descend chaste and pure: and this in proportion as it has ascended towards a conjunction of souls, by which the minds of the partners are opened more and more interiorly.

And we are assured in the Writings, and also by observation, that there is no love which more intensely labors for these openings, or which more powerfully and easily opens the interiors of their minds, than conjugial love—if so be that each intends it. For neither is then alone in the effort, but both are together in it. This elevation of conjugial love occurs in the state of betrothal: but it needs to be renewed again and again throughout marriage, by seeking common instruction and inspiration from the Divine doctrine, and by reflection upon the spiritual phases of the conjugial life. This is done by the married pair together, as if they twain were one in their desire for spiritual food. It is a return to the betrothal state.

But let us observe that, while the betrothal state looks to a first conjunction of the interiors of the two, apart from external conjunction (A C 9182; C L 305), yet, as a preparation for marriage, or for progressively new states of marriage, it is a preparation of each individually. Betrothal means a spiritual marriage within each of the partners, a conjunction of spiritual truth with its good. Such a conjunction presupposes a state of repentance and of spiritual humility.

It is true that in states of "first love," there is usually received an influx from the celestial heaven which for the time evokes the idea and hope of the eternity of marriage, and lifts the partners above themselves into a realm of romance, heroism, and poesy, where there is oblivion of sordid and selfish things. But this is a temporary loan-state, a gift which heaven offers as a foretaste to all lovers, even the unregenerate. And although, in such a state, the understanding is elevated into a new and truer light, yet with the evil the will has not ascended, and the thought therefore soon falls back into the concupiscences of the flesh, which pollute the vision of conjugial love with an alluring ardor that later is suddenly turned into cold. Only those can become chaste who think of marriage and of its holiness from religion. (C L 304) For conjugial love is from the love of the truths and goods of the church. Apart from this, the perception of the eternity of marriage perishes; which indicates that there is either no conjugial love with either, or there is an internal dissimilitude between them which causes love and conjugial friendship to recede from the interiors and at length to retire even to the cuticles. (C L 216, 214)

Consent is the essential of marriage. It carries within it man's past, and it is the prophecy which determines the future. For into marriage flow all the chaste and all the unchaste states which have introduced it, whatever man has confirmed. These states will turn into blessings or into states of cold in married life.

The consent to marriage can contain a prophecy of heaven itself. For marriage looks to heaven—both here and hereafter. Therefore heaven is called a wedding, and the consent of the Church to the Lord's leading is called a "betrothal." The Lord comes to the Church in His Divine Revelation, but the Church must welcome Him as Master and King. The Lord chooses and invites every man of the Church, but man must consent to prepare himself, to don the wedding garments of truth. In this consent lies the basic human reality, the freedom and reciprocation of man. According to the quality of that consent, man has eternal life.