A New Conceptual Context for the Sacramentality of Marriage

Abstract

AbstractThe traditional understanding of the sacramentality of marriage, introduced by Augustine, systematized by the medieval scholastics, and still central to Catholic institutional thought, has in recent years been criticized as being internally incoherent and externally counterfactual. These difficulties may be perceived within the frame of reference provided by Thomas Kuhn to be anomalies such as those that can be expected to appear during a transition from normal science to a new paradigm for explaining the data once satisfactorily accounted for by that science. A new paradigm or conceptual frame of reference is proposed for the sacramentality of marriage, and evidence is presented that this new paradigm is in fact emerging in the theological literature on marriage. The reader is cautioned, however, that the emerging paradigm of marriage's sacrmentality is not what it is usually thought to be.