Theopedia

Singleness

“I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.”

— 1 Corinthians 7:7 (ESV)

Definition

Singleness is the unmarried state, whether temporary, permanent, or not yet resolved into marriage. Scripture treats it neither as a deficiency needing correction nor as a higher spiritual attainment than marriage: both are legitimate ways for a believer to serve God, and neither may be bound on another by vow or by law (Matt. 19:11-12; 1 Cor. 7:7). A believer who remains single by deliberate, chaste renunciation of marriage does so exercising a particular gift, given to some and not to others, for undivided devotion to Christ (1 Cor. 7:32-35).

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Confessional Witness

Neither the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession nor the Westminster Confession devotes a chapter to singleness as such; both confessions’ marriage chapters address marriage, not its absence, and say nothing about celibacy directly. Their shared chapter on marriage states, identically in substance:

“It is lawful for all sorts of people to marry, who are able with judgment to give their consent.”12

Marriage, on this confessional wording, is lawful for anyone competent to consent to it. Neither confession makes marriage obligatory or treats remaining unmarried as a departure from a Christian’s duty. The same chapter goes on to require that Christians “marry only in the Lord,” restricting whom a believer may marry rather than requiring that a believer marry at all.1 Neither confession requires any vow, office, or ecclesiastical calling to remain celibate.

Biblical Basis

Jesus addresses singleness directly after his disciples, startled by his teaching on the permanence of marriage, conclude that “it is better not to marry.” Jesus does not answer with a universal rule but with a capacity some are given and others are not:

“Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”3

Commenting on this text alongside 1 Corinthians 7:7, John Calvin reads Jesus as identifying continence as one of the gifts “not bestowed indiscriminately on the whole body of the Church, but only on a few of its members”: Christ “first describes a certain class of individuals who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake; that is, in order that they may be able to devote themselves with more liberty and less restraint to the things of heaven. But lest any one should suppose that such a sacrifice was in every man’s power, he had shown a little before that all are not capable, but those only to whom it is specially given from above.”4 Paul, Calvin notes, “asserts the same thing still more plainly when he says, ‘Every man has his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that’” (1 Cor. 7:7).4

Paul’s own fullest treatment of singleness comes in 1 Corinthians 7, written in response to a question the Corinthian church had put to him. He states his own preference: “I wish that all people were as I am. But each has his own gift from God, one person has this gift, another has that” (1 Cor. 7:7), and again, “I say to the unmarried and to widows: It is good for them if they remain as I am” (v. 8). He immediately qualifies the preference rather than making it a rule: “if they do not have self-control, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with desire” (v. 9), and later adds that a person who marries “has not sinned” (vv. 28, 36, 38, 39).5 Paul’s argument for singleness turns on the “present distress” and the nearness of the world’s end: “the time is limited,” and those who marry, weep, rejoice, buy, or use the world should hold each of those things loosely, “for the present form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7:29-31). On this ground he commends singleness as a means of undivided devotion, freeing “the unmarried person… from such concerns” so that he “may be devoted to the Lord without distraction” (1 Cor. 7:35).5

Isaiah had already promised covenant standing to a category of people excluded, in Israel, from ordinary family lineage. To “the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, and choose what pleases me, and hold firmly to my covenant,” the Lord declares, “I will give them, in my house and within my walls, a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give each of them an everlasting name that will never be cut off” (Isa. 56:4-5). The promise answers the eunuch’s characteristic loss, a lack of physical descendants, with a lasting name secured by covenant faithfulness rather than by procreation.6

Historical Development

Rome’s evangelical counsels

Medieval Catholic theology distinguished the law’s “precepts,” binding on every Christian, from “evangelical counsels” (poverty, obedience, and celibacy) that were not obligatory but that a Christian could undertake by vow to merit a higher degree of holiness.7 The Council of Trent (1545-1563) gave the celibate state formal priority over marriage, canonizing as Catholic dogma that virginity or celibacy is “better and more blessed” than marriage.8 On this framework, a vowed celibate and a married Christian were not simply exercising different gifts; the celibate’s state itself ranked higher.

The Reformation controversy over vowed celibacy

The Reformers rejected mandatory clerical celibacy and the monastic vow of chastity together, on the ground that Christ’s own teaching made continence a particular gift, not a universal capacity a vow could conjure. John Calvin devoted a chapter of the Institutes to vows in general and to the vow of celibacy in particular, arguing that a vow presumes on a gift its taker may not have received:

“It is not in every man’s power to live chaste in celibacy, although it may be his most strenuous study and aim to do so: it is a special grace which the Lord bestows only on certain individuals… Let no man rashly despise matrimony as a thing useless or superfluous to him; let no man long for celibacy unless he is able to dispense with the married state.”9

Turning to monastic vows specifically, Calvin argued that the Roman church could not honestly claim the vow rested on the grace of God, “for, seeing he declares this to be a special gift not given to all (Mt. 19:11), no man has a right to assume that the gift will be his… If the faculty of continence is denied, the voice of God distinctly calls upon them to marry.”10 He held the vow unattainable for most who took it, pointing to the corruption it produced in practice as evidence: “how impossible the vow of continence is to those who have not received it by special gift, we have shown, and experience, even were I silent, declares.”11

English Reformed divines reached the same conclusion by way of 1 Corinthians 7 directly. William Ames, treating chastity in his Marrow of Sacred Divinity, distinguished virginal, conjugal, and widowed chastity as accidental variations on one virtue, and denied that singleness carried any inherent advantage in chastity over marriage: “single estate of itself maketh nothing to chastity: but wedlock hath both of it own nature a certaine purity in itselfe, as it is an ordinance of God.”12 On that basis he rejected the Roman vow outright: “the vow of single life, as it takes place among the Papists, is not a vow of chastity, but of diabolicall presumption, a snare of the conscience, and the bond of impurity.”12

Charles Hodge later summarized the Protestant case against monastic vows on several grounds: the whole system rested on the false premise that fallen believers could perform works of “supererogation” beyond the law’s demand; celibacy, obedience, and poverty carried no inherent merit of their own; the vow of obedience to a fellow creature violated the apostolic command “be not ye the servants of men”; and, specific to celibacy, “no one has a right to take that vow; because celibacy is right or wrong according to circumstances. It may be a sin, and therefore no such vow can bind the conscience.”13

Opposing Views

Roman Catholicism holds the position the Reformers rejected: that celibacy undertaken for the kingdom is objectively superior to marriage, a “counsel of perfection” available to those called to it. Herman Bavinck describes the Catholic distinction before answering it: Rome distinguishes “‘precepts’ of the law which are valid for all” from “’evangelical counsels’ which are not binding for all Christians but may be followed by those who wish to merit ‘sainthood.’”7 Bavinck does not dismiss the impulse behind it: “however many theoretical reservations we may have about the men and women who with total self-denial and extraordinary dedication devote themselves to the cause of Christ, practically and spontaneously we deeply admire them,” and he grants that Scripture itself treats abstention from marriage as a genuine “duty” in some circumstances (Matt. 19:11; 1 Cor. 7:7).14 His concern is that ranking celibacy above marriage as inherently holier produces what he calls a “double morality,” a spiritual elite set apart from ordinary believers by vows the confessions do not require.14

Protestant traditions generally hold that Scripture assigns no inherent rank to either state: marriage and singleness are both good, each carries its own calling, and neither vow nor ecclesiastical office may require either one of a believer.

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t Paul’s own preference for singleness (1 Cor. 7:7-8, 38, 40) concede that Rome is right about its superiority? Paul states a preference, not a ranking he binds on others. He immediately qualifies it: those without self-control “should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with desire” (1 Cor. 7:9), and a person who marries “has not sinned” (vv. 28, 36, 38, 39).15 Paul’s reasons for the preference, freedom from “trouble in this life” (v. 28) and from divided concerns (vv. 32-34), and the nearness of “the present distress” (v. 26), are circumstantial and eschatological grounds for a personal recommendation, not a claim that celibacy itself confers merit or a higher spiritual status.

If continence is a gift given only to some, isn’t binding a whole clerical or monastic order to celibacy exactly the kind of vow Scripture warns against? This is the Reformers’ own argument. Because Christ names continence “a special gift not given to all,” no one, and no institution, “has a right to assume that the gift will be his.”10 A vow of celibacy taken by an entire order presumes every member has received a gift Christ says only some receive; where the gift is absent, “the voice of God distinctly calls upon them to marry” instead of persisting in an unlawful vow.10

Related Doctrines

References

  1. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 25, “Of Marriage,” para. 3. ↩ ↩2

  2. Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 24, “Of Marriage,” para. 3. ↩

  3. Matthew 19:11-12 (ESV). ↩

  4. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), 2.8.42. ↩ ↩2

  5. Ken Magnuson, Invitation to Christian Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2020), chap. 6, “Sexual Ethics.” ↩ ↩2

  6. Magnuson, chap. 11, “Infertility and Assisted Reproductive Technologies.” ↩

  7. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 20, “Justification, Sanctification, and Perseverance.” ↩ ↩2

  8. Council of Trent, sess. 24, can. 10, cited in H. Denzinger, ed., The Sources of Catholic Dogma, trans. R. J. Deferrari (London and St. Louis: Herder, 1955), no. 980, quoted in Bavinck, chap. 20, “Justification, Sanctification, and Perseverance,” n. 54. ↩

  9. Calvin, Institutes, 2.8.43. ↩

  10. Calvin, Institutes, 4.13.17. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  11. Calvin, Institutes, 4.13.23. ↩

  12. William Ames, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity: Drawne out of the Holy Scriptures, and the Interpreters Thereof, and Brought into Method (London: Edward Griffin for Henry Overton, 1642), 372-73. ↩ ↩2

  13. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 317-18. ↩

  14. Bavinck, chap. 20, “Justification, Sanctification, and Perseverance.” ↩ ↩2

  15. Magnuson, chap. 6, “Sexual Ethics.” ↩