On the Meaning of "Biblical" & Whether Clergy Celibacy Is Biblical

Theological Letters

A friend, “Margaret,” reached out to me following a conversation about clergy celibacy. Specifically, she was curious about the practice in the Eastern Orthodox Church that clergy, though free to marry, must marry before ordination; if they are ordained while single, they must remain celibate. A friend of hers insisted that the practice was “not biblical,” and “Margaret” wanted to know my thoughts on the matter. Following a bit of research, I shared my thoughts, first on the turn of phrase “unbiblical” and second on the Orthodox position that clergy must be married before ordination or remain celibate. Please subscribe and support my work.

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Hi, “Margaret,”

As promised, I did some research on celibacy and ordination in the Christian East. Below are my findings. I hope it helps! I apologize if this is more info than you want. But, for future reference, this is what you get if you ask me to look into something. Be warned.

Before I get into the research itself, I think a preliminary word is in order. The objection you shared last night (from your friend) was that clergy celibacy is “not biblical.” This notorious turn of phrase by protestants typically goes under defined. There are two questions to consider when asking whether a practice is “unbiblical”: Does the Bible mention it? Does the Bible oppose it? If we break these into a truth table, four logical possibilities emerge: (1) The Bible mentions it and the Bible opposes it (yes, yes). (2) The Bible does not mention it and the Bible does not opposed it (no, no). (3) The Bible mentions it but the Bible does not oppose it (yes, no). (4) The Bible does not mention it but the Bible opposes it (no, yes). So, which of these possibilities is meant when saying that this or that is unbiblical?

The first option is the strongest possible meaning of unbiblical. The Bible identifies this practice and the Bible prohibits or opposes it. For a rather easy example, the Bible mentions murder and the Bible opposes or condemns murder. So, I think we can grant the appropriateness of calling murder an unbiblical practice.

The second possibility is tougher. When the Bible neither mentions something nor opposes it, what are we to make of whether it is biblical? Often protestants will refer to something as unbiblical that falls into this second category, but the case is weak. The Bible does not mention television or cars or air conditioning. So is the use of these technologies unbiblical? Most protestants would say No. But the very same line of reasoning is sometimes employed against other supposedly “unbiblical” practices in Catholicism or Orthodoxy — that is, practices to which there is no obvious reference nor opposition in the Bible. The argument is ex silentio (out of silence). Consistency typically falls by the wayside in this use of the term unbiblical. For some folks want to employ this standard in the religious realm, limiting religious practices to what is explicitly stated and endorsed in the Bible (practices unstated are unbiblical). But no one (or virtually no one) employs such a standard in non-religious life, shunning television, air conditioning, cars, or the like. Therefore, the “unbiblical” card, when used in this way, tends to lend itself to great inconsistency and say far more about the person’s personal beliefs than about the Bible.

The third possibility — the Bible mentions it but does not oppose it — may seem strange as a mode of opposition, but it happens. For example, we find virtually no references to gluttony in the Bible, except that Christ is accused of being a glutton (Matt 11:19; Luke 7:34). So, does this mean that deeming gluttony to be sin, as Christianity traditionally has, is unbiblical? After all, Christ mentions gluttony but offers no teaching on it. The passage demonstrates that the Jews believed gluttony was a sin — hence the accusation — but there is no obvious biblical endorsement or condemnation of this belief. So what are we to make of gluttony? Should we accept the broader Jewish ethic that the Bible acknowledges but makes no apparent judgment about? Or does the Bible’s silence constitute a judgment, offering us an indifferent shrug about gluttony? It’s a tough question to answer. For it goes to the question of whether the Bible offers instruction about how to handle topics on which the Bible offers no instruction. We’ll come back to this issue in a moment.

The fourth possibility is the most odd, namely, that the Bible does not mention something but opposes it. It may sound like this is a mere logical possibility required by the truth table, but a nonsensical one. Not so. This logical possibility goes to issues of inference or entailment. For example, I mentioned the television issue. Some folks might try to pull into a discussion about television the claim that we are supposed to think on things that are good, right, and profitable (Phil 4:8). Okay, well, that passage does not speak directly to entertainment; it is a more general principle about objects of meditation. So the application to television is indirect. It’s an inference. What are we to make of this application? Is the application biblical? Or is the generic instruction alone (i.e., in an extremely restricted sense) biblical?

Let me do a parallel example for the Christian East. Is facing East when we pray, as the Orthodox do, biblical? The biblical rationale is that Christ taught that as light shines in the East and is seen in the West, so it will be with the coming of the Son of Man (Matt 24:27). This passage was understood in the ancient Church quite literally as teaching that Christ will appear in the Eastern sky, though he will be visible in the West as well. Hence, in anticipation of his return, Orthodox Christians pray facing East, so that, should he return, we are facing him when he appears. Is this a biblical practice? Well, if you dispute the reading of the passage, then we have only silence on the matter (option 2), which again raises the question of whether silence indicates disapproval. But what if we grant the reading of the passage? In this case, the passage only teaches that Christ will appear in the East. What are we to make of the instruction that we ought to be facing him when he appears? There’s no direct biblical support for this particular practice as such. We are instructed to be watchful for his coming, as the wise virgins were (Matt 25:1-13). We are told to honor the Lord our God (Luke 4:8), and cultural beliefs about showing respect or honor would indicate that we ought not turn our back toward him. But on the whole, the practice is a matter of inference from several biblical teachings. So, how do we rank this is the biblical-unbiblical scale?

And what of entailments, which also fall to this fourth possibility? For example, I mentioned gluttony. There is no clear teaching on gluttony itself, but there is very clear teaching that the Holy Spirit teaches us to say No to the passions, exercising self-control, and it is because of the passions that death entered the world (e.g., Titus 2:11-12). Clearly, gluttony is a passionate activity (in the ancient sense of the term), so while gluttony is not named and condemned, its root (viz., the passions) is, and the practice of saying No to that root is endorsed. Does that suffice to make the prohibition on gluttony biblical? It certainly appears to be an entailment of the biblical teachings, even if not stated directly. So, gluttony, biblical or unbiblical?

Such is the thorny issue of the turn of phrase, That is unbiblical. When someone levels this objection, it is important to decipher what he means. And the fact of the matter is, most who use this turn of phrase do not themselves know what they mean by it.

Now, let’s point out one feature of the turn of phrase that is no doubt present in common protestant use, namely, the belief in sola scriptura. Most protestants use this phrase because they measure all doctrine by the Bible alone — or so they say. Yet, we must ask whether this underlying commitment itself is biblical. The answer is No in the strongest sense, namely, that the practice is in direct contradiction to a biblical teaching. St. Paul is very clear that the Thessalonians are to abide by whatever he taught them, whether by word of mouth or by epistle (2 Thess 2:15). In other words, the instructions of the apostles were binding before being written down, and even what was never written was still binding in New Testament Christianity. Therefore, the limiting of apostolic teachings to what is written only is itself an unbiblical practice in the strongest sense of the term unbiblical — a practice identified and opposed (option 1).

Incidentally, the Eastern Church fathers are very clear on the point. I will quote my patron Saint, Basil of Caesarea:

Of the dogmas and preachings preserved in the Church, some we have from the written teaching, others we received from the tradition of the Apostles, handed down to us in secret, both of them having the same force for piety. No one who has the least experience of the laws of the Church will object to these, for if we try to dismiss that which is unwritten among the customs as of no great authority, then without noticing it we shall damage the Gospel. (Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 27.66)

In this light, the Orthodox should never use either “biblical” or “unbiblical” in the sense derived from sola scriptura. Our teachings are apostolic. Some are explicitly stated in the Bible; others are handed down orally and are not in the Bible, though they are nonetheless compatible with or complimentary to or entailments of what is in the Bible (e.g., facing East when we pray). Biblical in an Orthodox sense may mean the former; it may mean the latter.1

In addition, we also believe in the economy of the Church. That is to say, when an issue arises that the Bible does not offer clear instruction on, the Church is in a position to determine the best practice based on what has been handed down. And this, too, we see as biblical, precisely because the apostles offered such instruction throughout their own epistles; they held councils; and they placed others in leadership roles as clergy. Such ecclesial economy is reflected in our canon law, a straight rod meant for measuring best practice.

So, when it comes to clergy celibacy, we face the question of whether it is biblical or unbiblical and what is meant by this phrase. Given that we have biblical evidence of St. Peter being married prior to his ministry (Matthew 8:14–15; Mark 1:29–31; and Luke 4:38–41), and St. Paul insists that no one be elevated to bishop unless he is the husband of only one wife (i.e., is not a polygamist) (I Tim 3:2, 12; Titus 1:6), we know it is biblical — identified and permitted — that married folk be elevated to clergy. Opposition to this practice would be unbiblical. Now, what we do not have is biblical evidence for post-ordained marriage. Here, there is silence Hence, this particular issue falls into that odd category of neither acknowledged nor addressed (option 2). So, what do we find as far as Church practice and canon law on the topic?