Does the Bible teach the celibacy of priests?

How different from scripture is the enforced celibacy of nuns, not to speak of monks and priests also! To what moral enormities, as well as wretchedness, this daring encroachment on God's prerogative has given rise for ages! Yet no doubt need be that it grew out of a desire for thorough devotedness. The due limits are laid down in Matt. 19:11-12 and in 1 Cor. 7 as well as here. The unmarried state has its advantages where grace gives the due inward condition, which would surely fit into suited external circumstances and issue in such a life and service as we see in the apostle himself. But this is not given to all, nor is it of man's will but of divine grace. Make it a law, and the grace is destroyed; and a speedy result of sin, shame, and misery proclaims the wisdom of God's ways and the folly of Christendom's. Presuming to do better, they have notoriously fallen not only into the violation of common morality, but into unspeakable turpitude, covered with the veil of hypocrisy, to the ruin of souls and the present worldly advantage of those whose unswerving instinct is doing evil that good may come, whose judgment is just.

The disciples, with their question, lay bare their own hearts. If such was the case, they think, that the best thing is not to marry at all. He speaks then of what incapacitates for marriage. Some are unfitted for this divinely instituted relation by nature, others have been made so by wicked men, a custom still largely prevailing in the Orient. There is a third class who are exempt, and these are those who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of the heavens. This does not mean mutilation. It means, no doubt, living in an unmarried state for the sake of the kingdom. It is not a law, not an obligation, nor a "sacrament." Celibacy is a man-made and wicked doctrine, contrary to Scripture. "He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." It is then something to be received, a gift from above. The grace and power of God is able to lift some to whom it is given, above the natural things of life. Paul undoubtedly was such a one to whom it was given. "For I would that all men were even as myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that.... But and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin marry she hath not sinned. Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh; but I spare you. But this I say, brethren, the time is short, it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none.... But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord" (1 Cor. 7:7, 28-32).

It was an evil day for Christendom when the idea took possession of men's minds that Christ's servants should remain unmarried. Not only has frail flesh been exposed thereby to the gravest moral peril, but apostolic precedent and the plain injunctions of Holy Scripture have alike been defied by the idea. In 1 Cor. 9:5, where Paul the apostle insists that he had the same right to a wife as to eat and drink, he cites the example of "the other apostles," and expressly names Cephas (Peter). In his first epistle to Timothy (1 Tim. 3), which is occupied largely with ecclesiastical order, he lays it down authoritatively that both Bishops and Deacons should be married men. If the question be raised, "Why then did not Paul take a wife for himself?'' the answer must be that he was called to a life of incessant itineracy, and that over a very wide area. The devoted apostle felt that, under these circumstances, it would be better for him to be absolutely free. But this did not touch his right, upon which he insisted, while putting it aside in self-sacrifice for the furtherance of the work of the Gospel.

Now you will remark, as I said at the beginning, all is sensuous here, what acts on the imagination; no question of truth and grace, no holiness, unless celibacy be taken for it, which he believed apostolic — not, observe, self-devotedness, when given of God, which is apostolic, but as a rule; which is so false, that it shews Dr. N. was wholly governed by imagination. Not only does the apostle say, the elder is to be the husband of one wife, having his children subject in all gravity, and let us know that Peter and the Lord's brethren were married though he and Barnabas were not; but in the council of Nice, which Dr. N. had been just studying, it was formally refused to be made a rule, though it had acquired great influence, and was resisted by Paphnutius, an unmarried bishop, as a snare. What its enforcement in the eleventh century, by Hildebrand (though never carried through till the end of the thirteenth), produced is well known. I may speak of it farther on, when I come to speak of the causes of Protestantism. A man must have been wholly blinded by imagination, or Satan, to say celibacy was, as a rule, apostolic. Even the Roman body holds it for a mere matter of discipline; the Greek requires that priests should be married — only bishops not, if I do not mistake.

Two things are especially mentioned, "forbidding to marry" and "commanding to abstain from meats." (The Roman Catholic Church forbids her priests to marry, and also commands her members to abstain from certain meats on certain days.) This austere asceticism was a pretension to superior piety. Men began to teach these heresies even in apostolic days. They developed later into systems like Gnosticism; and today we see the same principles advocated in theosophical and other occult movements. They forbid what God has established in creation, for marriage is an institution which God has sanctified, and to use that which God has created to be received with thanksgiving by them which believe and know the truth. They claimed that their superior holy character would not be consistent with marriage and eating meats.

Notice in verse 3 the negative character of the teachings of such deceivers. "Forbidding to marry" may sound very holy and self-denying, but it is not so. A sect may be easily formed on a basis of this kind, but it is opposed to the truth of Christ. They may justify it by insisting that Christ was unmarried, and Paul was unmarried, which two facts are true. But the Lord Jesus nevertheless confirmed and emphasized what Genesis had declared, that "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh" (Mt. 19:5). And Paul no less strongly declares the truth of the purity of the marriage bond in Scriptures such as 1 Timothy 5:14; Hebrews 13:4; and 1 Corinthians 7:28. He himself had voluntarily made himself a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven's sake (Mt. 19:12), willingly foregoing marriage that he might the more fully serve the Lord. But he would adamantly oppose any suggestion of men to make such a thing a rule: this would be utter evil.

We have so far had ample Biblical proof that 1 Timothy 4:1-4 applies to Spiritualism in its prediction that in the latter times some would pay heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons speaking lies in hypocrisy with conscience seared as with a hot iron. Added to this, Nos. 3 and 4 resolutions carry us on to “forbidding to marry” and “commanding to abstain from meats.”

“Forbidding to marry” is not to be confounded with the practice of celibacy as practised by the Roman Catholic clergy, but refers to the Spiritualistic teaching of spiritual affinity, by which the marriage tie is derided, and in its practical working men and women are seduced from their lawful partners to form unholy and unlawful links with their so-called spiritual affinities.

They forbade to marry and bade men to abstain from meats which God created for reception with thanksgiving by those faithful and fully acquainted with the truth. There was the assumption of extraordinary purity. But the wiles of the devil were in it; for the assumption impeached God's institution of marriage, the bond of society here below. And God is not mocked. The result soon showed that the evil one was its author, for the deepest moral corruption was the consequence.

Grace may call a servant of God for special and worthy reasons to a path inconsistent with the married relation, because its duties could not be fulfilled with the due accomplishment of the objects of that path. So we see in the apostle Paul himself, as he lets us know in 1 Cor. 7. But this very chapter maintains the ordinary rule of the marriage state, as elsewhere he exhorts that it should be every way in honour. Only the call of God is paramount. Yet he that is so called respects and never despises the ordinary rule because of that exception. Error lays hold of the exception (for even error cannot subsist without a scrap or show of truth) and converts the exception into a human rule. It is Satan occupying the place and rights of the Lord; his aim is to bring God into contempt and lead man dazzled with the vain hope of higher holiness into the depths of corruption. It is the truth (and no lie is of the truth) which sanctifies.

So in bidding men to abstain from meats the same disrespect of God appears. He created them to be received with thanksgiving. No doubt all mankind were meant to share the benefit and do so in their measure; but many partake like brutes without real thanksgiving, often without even the form. The faithful thoroughly acquainted with the truth receive such gifts from God and give thanks. Satan exalts some to such a height of philosophic folly as to deny that they come from His hand Who reconciled them to Himself by the death of His Son; then to imagine them to be the temptations of an evil being; finally to conceive that there is no such thing as creation or consequently a Creator. So that the error if but a little in beginning becomes the beginning of a very great evil.

1879 256 Dear Brethren — All exclusive points are out of place at the Lord's table: it is clear Christ's death is before us … It was not to be done in remembrance of deliverance from Egypt, but in remembrance of Him — "my memory." But the simple answer to this link-breaking out of the sentence is, that there is nothing about it in it. The Greek does not mean breaking every link with the creation, and says nothing about it; that is a simple fact. Should anyone press it as a consequence, if led by the Spirit of God, all well, and show that Christ's death involved it, if it be so, is another matter; but it is not in that sentence. I am not quite sure that I understand it, and though I am quite disposed to see a right intention, in those who taught it, for it was breaking with the world, I doubt a little that they do any more. My impression is, that their intention is right, and that they aim at an important truth, but I cannot go quite so fast as some. When He comes again and takes this earth and governs it and blesses it, it is as Himself risen, that is true: but you can hardly call this world then the new creation. "The link of life in Him with this world was broken," but then I should be a little shy of speaking of His being linked with it at any time, though coming into it as a true man born of a woman, for the suffering of death and partaking of flesh and blood. But He says, "They are not of the world, as I am not of the world." And again, "Ye are of this world, I am not of this world; ye are from beneath, I am from above." Yet, I repeat, I believe the object to be right (that is, that we are crucified to the world, and the world to us), at least, I am quite ready to suppose so. But I affirm positively it is not in eis ten emen anamnesin, though it be in death He is symbolised before us; but it is Him we remember, and I doubt that the form in which it is put could be made good from scripture, and scripture is wiser than we are. But as an effect, it does imply our having died to the world; for we show forth the Lord's death till He come; but I cannot admit with this absoluteness that every Christian is, according to scripture, dead to the old creation, because his body is of the old creation: we are waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body. I see it held up as desirable that a man should live absolutely in the power of the Spirit, and know nothing else. But he that marries does well: what creation is that of? and he that forbids to marry does very ill. I see two things: God's part in the old creation, and yet fully recognised, marriage as at the beginning, children, amiable nature (the Lord loved the young man when He looked on him); but a power brought in wholly above and out of it. If one lives according to this, all well, it is to be desired; but to condemn the other is to condemn God. Sin has come in and spoiled it, and there is thus hindrance, care, sorrow in the flesh, that is true; but God ordered it in the beginning, and God owns what He ordered till He brings in something new. Dead to sin, to the world, to the law, that I find in scripture, but not to the old creation, and that is the place of every Christian, and he is to hold himself so; but dead to the old creation God does not say, for it is God's creation, and every creature of God is good. Live above it in its present state, all well, and better, if it be given to us; but death to the first creation, and breaking every link with it, is not true whilst we are in the body. Scripture does not say so; and scripture, I say again, is much wiser than we are. There is a new creation, and as in Christ we are of it, I think we may say the first fruits of it, and of His creatures at any rate. Kaine ktisis is a very singular expression; it is not "he is" as in English, but merely affirms its existence and character for one in Christ. But then when the scriptures say He died, it is not to the old creation; but "He who knew no sin was made sin," and elsewhere, "In that he died, he died unto sin once." It is well and safe not to go beyond scripture. Fresh truths and mighty powers fill our sails, and it is well; but they may, if we trust them, and the consequences we draw, carry our minds on to rocks hidden underneath the surface. The word of God checks, or rather keeps us in the right and safe course. The first intentions may be right: but when not so kept, when one's own mind is trusted, it may run into open ungodliness — the common result of the human mind being trusted with mighty truths, or rather trusting itself with them; and in these days this has to be watched.

1 Corinthians 7:32-34 teaches that the unmarried are the most free from care, but verse 7 as distinctly teaches that “every man has his own proper gift of God.” Each one must know for himself what his proper gift is. It is one thing to say, “Follow Paul's example and quite another thing to have the “proper gift” to do it. It is a fatal mistake for anyone to expect to walk in a path for which God has not given him a call or given him the spiritual power. Remember in these days of ritualism and revived monasticism, that marriage is a holy and honorable institution, established by God in the Garden of Eden and sanctioned by His presence in Cana of Galilee. It is pronounced to be honorable in all by His Spirit in Hebrews 13:4. Thus much as to the general principle, but the moment you come to individual cases, each one must be guided of God. To Him we affectionately commend you.

We cannot understand why you should have occasion to seek a human opinion on a point where Hebrews 13:4 and 1 Timothy 4:1-4 are so clear. Oh! when will people learn to open their Bible and bow down to its holy authority in all things? We have an abhorrence of that mock spirituality, sanctimoniousness and transcendentalism so apparent in the remarks to which you call our attention. To us it seems to be simply holiness in the flesh, which we know is one of Satan's crafty wiles. As we said, marriage was instituted by the Lord God in the Garden of Eden. It was sanctioned by the presence of Christ in Cana of Galilee. It is pronounced honorable by the Holy Spirit in Hebrews 13. To forbid it is said to be a doctrine of demons in 1 Timothy 4. This is quite sufficient for us, let pious sentimentalists and hyper-spiritualists say what they will.