05 — The Sacrament of Love
Le Sacrement de l’amour: Le mystère conjugal à la lumière de la tradition orthodoxe (1962) is Evdokimov’s book on marriage, and for many readers his best. It grew out of an earlier essay, Le Mariage, sacrement de l’amour (1944), and it argues that marriage is a sacrament whose matter is love itself — not consent, not consummation, not procreation — that the couple is an icon of the Trinity and of Christ and the Church, and that the married state is an ascetic way, the place where the monastic vows are interiorized.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration)
Files
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Marriage as Sacrament and Way | The sacramentality of marriage, the crowning, the icon of the Trinity, and marriage as the lay form of the monastic vocation |
| Eros, Chastity, and the Nuptial Mystery | Eros redeemed rather than tolerated, nuptial chastity, sexuality, procreation, and the eschatological horizon of the couple |
Why This Section Matters
Evdokimov’s account of marriage is the point at which his general thesis about the lay vocation becomes a specific and testable proposal. It is also the part of his work with the widest and least contested reception: readers who are wary of his theology of woman routinely praise The Sacrament of Love, and one Orthodox reviewer calls it simply “the most profound treatment” of the subject he has encountered (Eastern Christian Books, “Paul Evdokimov and Olivier Clement,” 2011).
A §4.1 note. That marriage is one of the holy mysteries, that its Orthodox rite is a crowning and not a contract of consent, and that the union images Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:22–33) are the Church’s own teaching. Evdokimov’s further theses — that love is the sacrament’s proper “matter,” that the couple images the Trinity specifically, and that marriage should be understood as an interiorized monasticism — are his theological work, offered as a reading of the tradition.
See Also
- 04 — Interiorized Monasticism — the general thesis of which this is the application
- 06 — Woman and the Salvation of the World — the anthropology presupposed here
- The Holy Mysteries — the Orthodox sacramental theology of marriage
References
- Evdokimov, Paul. Le Sacrement de l’amour: Le mystère conjugal à la lumière de la tradition orthodoxe. Paris: Éditions de l’Épi, 1962. English: The Sacrament of Love: The Nuptial Mystery in the Light of the Orthodox Tradition, trans. Anthony P. Gythiel and Victoria Steadman. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985.
- Plekon, Michael. “The Sacrament of Love: Paul Evdokimov on Marriage.” In T. G. Dedon and S. Trostyanskiy, eds., Love, Marriage and Family in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition (Sophia Studies in Orthodox Theology 7). New York: Theotokos Press / Sophia Institute, 2013, 25–39.