The mystery of marriage in the Church of the East
Article summary proposed by the Contacts review with LLM assistance
This article by Horia Roscanu, a member of the Greek Catholic Church in Canada, offers a theological reflection on marriage in the Eastern Christian tradition. Taking a meditative and catechetical approach, the author presents the Orthodox and Byzantine vision of marriage as a fully-fledged religious vocation, parallel to and complementary with monasticism. The central idea is that marriage constitutes a sacrament of Trinitarian communion, sanctifying bodily life rather than merely tolerating it. The article successively examines the Byzantine liturgy of marriage, the iconography of the couple Joachim and Anne, Evdokimov's theology of interiorized monasticism, as well as Eastern positions on contraception and divorce. Its contribution lies in highlighting an Eastern Christian anthropology that rejects any body-spirit dualism, thereby offering theological resources for addressing sexuality, including with adolescents, without resorting to a purely prohibitive morality.
This article has not been translated yet — it is available in its French version here.
The rest of this article is reserved for subscribers of the Contacts review.
Subscribe to read more
Digital subscription · Immediate access to the Contacts library