Luther on Sacramentality of Marriage

Luther presents several arguments against the Roman Catholic claim that marriage is a sacrament.

First, he claims that it doesn’t fit the definition of a sacrament, which includes a divine promise and a sign: “We said that there is in every sacrament a word of divine promise, to be believed by whoever receives the sign, and that the sign alone cannot be a sacrament. Now we read nowhere that the man who marries a wife receives any grace of God. No, there is not even a divinely instituted sign in marriage, or nowhere do we read that marriage was instituted by God to be a sign of anything. To be sure, whatever takes place in a visible manner may be regarded as a type or figure of something invisible; but types and figures are not sacraments in the sense in which we use this term.”

He admits that marriage is called a “sacrament” in the Vulgate of Ephesians 5:32, but denies that this makes it a sacrament. He argues first on philological grounds: “This argument, like the others, betrays great shallowness and a negligent and thoughtless reading of Scripture. Nowhere in Holy Scripture is this word sacrament employed in the meaning to which we are accustomed; it has an entirely different meaning. For wherever it occurs it signifies not the sign of a sacred thing, but a sacred, secret, hidden thing.”

Thus, “sacrament, or mystery, in Paul’s writings, is that wisdom of the Spirit, hidden in a mystery” and “a sacrament is a mystery, or secret thing, which is set forth in words and is received by the faith of the heart.” This is the sense in which Christ’s relation to the church is a “sacrament” or a “great mystery.” According to Luther, the great mystery is not marriage itself, but the secret now disclosed as Christ and the church: “Christ and the Church are, therefore, a mystery, that is, a great and secret thing, which it was possible and proper to represent by marriage as by a certain outward allegory, but that was no reason for their calling marriage a sacrament. The heavens are a type of the apostles, as Psalm 19:1 declares; the sun is a type of Christ; the waters, of the peoples; but that does not make those things sacraments, for in every case there are lacking both the divine institution and the divine promise, which constitute a sacrament.”

Luther also argues that marriage cannot be a sign of the “new law” because it is universal and pagan as well as Christian: “ since marriage existed from the beginning of the world and is still found among unbelievers, it cannot possibly be called a sacrament of the New Law and the exclusive possession of the Church. The marriages of the ancients were no less sacred than are ours, nor are those of unbelievers less true marriages than those of believers, and yet they are not regarded, as sacraments. Besides, there are even among believers married folk who are wicked and worse than any heathen; why should marriage be called a sacrament in their case and not among the heathen? Or are we going to rant so foolishly of baptism and the Church as to hold that marriage is a sacrament only in the Church, just as some make the mad claim that temporal power exists only in the Church? That is childish and foolish talk, by which we expose our ignorance and our arrogance to the ridicule of unbelievers.”