For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy.
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
These unbelievers have the benefit of good will, which protects them from detesting the name of Christ. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
Nam quaham ratione dicit Paulus apostolus esse "sanctificatam mulierem a viro "aut "virum a muliere? ".
non solum in pariendo, sed etiam in discendo. Jam "sancti sunt filii".
usque ad illud: "Nunc autem sancta est."
For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife. Such union by marriage is holy. The believer, therefore, is not, as you so scrupulously fear, defiled by contact with an unbeliever, but rather the unbeliever, as Anselm says, is sanctified by a kind of moral naming and sprinkling of holiness, both because he is the husband of a holy, that is a believing, wife, and also because by not hindering his wife in her faith, and by living happily with her, he as it were paves the way for himself to be converted by the prayers, merits, words, and example of his believing wife, and so to become holy. So did S. Cecilia convert her husband Valerian; Theodora, Sisinnius; Clotilda, Clodævus. So say Anselm, Theophylact, Chrysostom.
S. Natalia, the wife of S. Adrian, is illustrious for having not only incited her husband to adopt the faith, but also most gloriously to undergo martyrdom for it. For when she had heard that women were forbidden to serve the martyrs, and that the prison-doors would n...
Is sanctified. The meaning is not that the faith of the husband, or the wife is of itself sufficient to put the unbelieving party, or their children, in the state of grace and salvation: but that it is very often an occasion of their sanctification, by bringing them to the true faith. (Challoner)
Sanctification which has different significations, cannot here signify that an infidel is truly and properly sanctified, or justified, by being married to a faithful believer; therefore we can only understand an improper sanctification, so that such an infidel, though not yet converted, need not be looked upon as unclean, but in the dispositions of being converted, especially living peaceably together, and consenting that their children be baptized, by which they are truly sanctified.
How knowest thou, O wife? These words seem to give the reason, why they may part, when they cannot live peaceably, and when there is little prospect that the party that is an infidel will be converted. (Witham)...
If a man joined to a harlot is one body with her, then it is clear that a woman joined to an idolater is one body with him. That is true, but in this case she does not become unclean as a result. On the contrary, her cleanness overcomes the uncleanness of her husband, just as the cleanness of a believing husband overcomes the uncleanness of his unbelieving wife. How can this be, if a husband is not condemned for casting out a wife who has played the harlot? The reason is that in this case there is hope that the lost member may be saved through the marriage, whereas in the other case, the marriage has already been dissolved through harlotry. An unbelieving man may be reclaimed by his believing wife if she is faithful to him. But for a harlot things are not so easy, because how can she reclaim someone whom she has wronged? The same is true for a believing husband who has an unbelieving wife.
The children of believers were in some sense destined for holiness and salvation, and in the pledge of this hope Paul supported those marriages which he wished to continue.
It was from this circumstance that the apostle said, that when either of the parents was sanctified, the children were holy; and this as much by the prerogative of the (Christian) seed as by the discipline of the institution (by baptism, and Christian education). "Else "says he, "were the children unclean "by birth:.
By the faith in (the state of) Gentile marriage are not defiled (thereby) for this reason, that, together with themselves, others
