Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God’s holy ordinance, through which He wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to His glory, and calls into His kingdom. In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more that something personal – it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man. As you first gave the ring to one another and have now received it a second time from the hand of the pastor, so love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God. As high as God is above man, so high are the sanctity the rights, and the promise of marriage above the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of love. It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.在《獄中書簡》（基督教文藝出版社，1999年九版）的第 212 頁，譯者許碧端卓越地譯為：
上帝帶領你們的婚姻。婚姻並非祇是彼此相愛，它具有更高尚的尊嚴與力量，婚姻是上帝神聖的命令，祂藉著這個方法來延續人類的生命，直到末日。在你們的愛情裏，你們看見自己是世界上兩個單獨存在的個體；在婚姻裏，你們都看見自己為連接世代的鍊子，上帝為了祂的榮耀使世代繼往開來，並且領導它們進入祂的國度。在愛情中你們只看到幸福的天庭，通過婚姻，你們被安置在一個對世界對人類負責的職位上。你們的愛情是你們私有的財富；婚姻卻不但是私人的事情，它是一種生活狀況，一種任務。正如王冠使人人成為國王，而非單單在於他有統治的意志。同樣的，使你們在上肻與人面前成為夫婦，並非單單在於你們彼此間的愛情，而是在於你們婚約。當舉行婚禮時，最初你們互相交換戒指，第二次卻是從牧師的手裏接過來的，這表明愛情是從鄦們本身而出，而婚姻卻是從上帝而來的，正如上帝比人無限超越一般，婚姻在神聖，權利和契約上，是高過愛情的。從現在開始，並非以你們的愛情去維護婚約，而是以婚約來維護愛情。
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