Marriage

Another interesting thing about Chapter 7 of 1 Corinthians is that it's where the early church formed their idea of marriage being a kind of shameful consolation prize, below the virtue of celibacy. Paul really seems to push the single idea in this Chapter, and makes it sound like "Well, if you can't control yourself, there's always marriage.....not that there's anything wrong with that...." But that fact that he puts them in that order, and points to the example of himself being single a few times tips the scales a bit. I read something brief about the change in that mentality during the Protestant Reformation, I believe, in a great book about Shakespeare. If if find it, I'll post my findings, since I'm not too sure when or why the shift occured.