Was St. Paul Married?
Paul and Lydia. St. Lydia’s Baptistry, Philippi, Greece.
Photography by Ana Maria Vargas
(Listen to an audio version of the blog above!)
Here’s the question:
“Was St. Paul married?”
Here’s the answer:
Judaism teaches that marriage is the normal, natural state for adults. Unlike in some Christian denominations, refraining from marriage is not considered praiseworthy or holy in Judaism; rather, it is considered aberrant and unnatural. Indeed, the Talmud teaches that an unmarried man is “incomplete,” lacking his bashert, his “soul-mate” (Yebomoth 62b).
In Genesis 2: 18, God says of Adam: “It is not good for the man to be alone.” Thus, in Judaism the primary motive for marriage is not procreation, but companionship and intimacy. Some rabbis in the Talmud urged that a boy marry upon reaching the age of majority (Sanhedrin 76b), but more commonly a boy would marry around eighteen years old. Although Talmudic study was a valid reason for delaying marriage, young men unmarried after twenty were considered cursed by God (Kiddushin 29b).
It is unlikely then that St. Paul, an extremely well-educated young man in his early 30s, a student of the great Gamaliel, one being groomed in Jerusalem for leadership at the highest levels, would be unmarried. Yet, that seems to be the case during St. Paul’s later apostolic career. When Paul writes his first epistle to the church at Corinth in the winter of A.D. 54, he says: “Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: it is good for them to stay as I am” (Acts: 7: 8). Yet, other Christian leaders from Peter downward were married. St. Paul himself argues that he has the “right to take a believing wife along . . . as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas [Peter]” (1 Corinthians 9: 5), but he does not avail himself of that right.
So what gives with Paul?
There are three possible scenarios. First, St. Paul was married, but he chose not to take his wife along with him on his travels. Since St. Paul spent the greater part of 30 years on the road, that would be a very long separation, putting Paul’s wife in a most difficult position. Jewish law of St. Paul’s day allows for divorce, but only the husband may initiate it, not the wife. If a husband leaves for an extended period of time or if his whereabouts are unknown, his wife becomes an agunah, literally “an anchored woman.” She cannot divorce, nor can she remarry. In a patriarchal culture such a position would deprive her of companionship, as well as financial and emotional support. This most often happened if a wife’s husband died or went missing while in a distant land and word of his fate failed to get back to his family. Although not a Jewish example, this is Penelope’s position in the Odyssey when Odysseus goes to war in Troy and doesn’t return home for twenty years. Not knowing if Odysseus is dead or alive, Penelope is courted by suitors but she is not free to marry any of them.
A second scenario may be that after St. Paul’s conversion and his subsequent deep involvement in missionary work, his wife left him. This may be what lies behind St. Paul’s comment in Philippians 3: 8, when he says: “What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.” Perhaps this explains St. Paul’s advice in 1 Corinthians 7: 12-15. Part one of St. Paul’s advice reflects precisely Jesus’ strict position on divorce in Matthew 19: 3-9, while part two states Paul’s position regarding an unbelieving spouse who leaves her husband:
To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.
To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her . . . but if the unbeliever leaves, let him do so. A believing man or woman is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace.
Significantly, St. Paul prefaces his position by emphasizing that it is his position, not the Lord’s. This is referred to as the “Pauline Privilege” in Roman Catholic canon law, and it permits divorce if neither partner had been baptized at the time of their marriage; one partner becomes a baptized Christian during the marriage; and the other partner leaves the marriage as a result. In such a case, the divorced, baptized partner is free to marry again. The Pauline Privilege differs from annulment in that the Pauline Privilege dissolves a marriage, whereas an annulment declares that the marriage was invalid from the beginning. If St. Paul’s unbelieving wife had left him because of his faith in Christ, in Paul’s view he would be free of the marriage and able to marry again, should he choose to do so.
A third scenario may be that St. Paul had been married, but his wife died, perhaps during childbirth, and had left him a widower, a rather common occurrence in biblical times. I rather like this alternative, for it would explain much about St. Paul’s elevated—indeed, romantic—view of marriage: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her . . .” (Ephesians 5: 25). And if St. Paul’s wife died during childbirth, and the child died as well, it explains much about St. Paul’s relationship with his young protégé Timothy, whom he addresses as “Timothy, my dear son” (1 Timothy 1: 2). This is a position deftly argued by Joachim Jeremias in his article, “War Paulus Witwer?” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 25 (1926), pp. 310ff.
Any discussion about St. Paul’s marital status cannot overlook Lydia, “a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira” (Acts 16: 14) whom St. Paul personally baptizes, and the woman with whom St. Paul stays while in Philippi (Acts 16: 15). F.F. Bruce in his great biography, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1977) dismisses out of hand the “romantic fantasy . . . that [Paul] married Lydia, the tradesman of Philippi, and that she is the ‘true yoke fellow’” of Philippians 4: 3 (p. 269). I am not willing to make the leap and say that St. Paul married Lydia, but certainly he is very fond of her. She is quite an extraordinary woman: she has a large home in Philippi (large enough to host Paul, Luke, Silas and Timothy for an extended stay); she is a successful businesswoman, importing cloth from Thyatira to Philippi; she is a spiritual leader for other women in Philippi; she is a pillar in the church at Philippi; and as far as we can tell, Lydia appears not to be married. In A.D. 57 on St. Paul’s return from his third missionary journey he travels through Macedonia with Sopater, Aristarchus, Secundus, Gaius, Timothy, Tychicus and Trophimus, but St. Paul stays at Philippi for Passover, while the others go ahead to Troas, where five days after Passover Paul joins them. Presumably, Paul stays at Lydia’s for the holiday (Acts 20: 4-6).
None of this, of course, proves that St. Paul had a romantic relationship with Lydia, nor does it prove that St. Paul was ever married, but it does open the door to intriguing speculation.