Vow

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This article is about a promise. For other uses, see Vow (disambiguation).

A vow (

vote) is a promise or oath
. A vow is used as a promise, a promise solemn rather than casual.

Marriage vows

Main article: Marriage vows

Marriage vows are binding promises each partner in a couple makes to the other during a

wedding ceremony. Marriage customs have developed over history and keep changing as human society develops. In earlier times and in most cultures the consent of the partners has not had the importance now attached to it, at least in Western societies and in those they have influenced.[1] Protestants, for instance, consider marriage vow as an unchangeable divine law since it needs not only "conciliar assertion" but also the support of the Scripture, making marriage a form of divine ordinance.[2]

Divine vows

Within the world of monks and nuns, a vow is sometimes a transaction between a person and a

Bodhisattva vows. In the Roman Catholic Code of Canon Law, the vow and the oath are not considered acts of worship (cultus) like the liturgical celebration. However, they are considered acts of religion due to their sacred character, including the religious obligations they entail.[3] Here, an important characteristic of the vow involves the manner by which non-Catholics are recognized to be capable of making a vow, which must also be fulfilled by reason of the virtue of religion.[3]

The god is usually expected to grant, on entering into contracts or covenants with man, the claims his vow establishes on their benevolence, and valuing of his gratitude. Conversely, in taking a vow, the petitioner's piety and spiritual attitude have begun to outweigh those merely ritual details of the ceremony that are all-important in magical rites.[4]

Sometimes the old magical usage survives side by side with the more developed idea of a personal power to be approached in prayer. For example, in the Maghreb (in North Africa), in time of drought the maidens of Ma.zouna carry every evening in procession through the streets a doll called ghonja, really a dressed-up wooden spoon, symbolizing a pre-Islamic rain-spirit. Often one of the girls carries on her shoulders a sheep, and her companions sing the following words:[4]

Here we have a sympathetic rain charm, combined with a prayer to the rain viewed as a personal goddess and with a promise or vow to give her the animal. The point of the promise lies of course in the fact that water is in that country stored and carried in sheep-skins.[5][4]

Secondly, the vow is quite apart from established

Ancient Greek: εύχή) expressed both. The characteristic mark of the vow, as the Suda and the Greek Church Fathers remark, was that it was a promise either of things to be offered to God in the future and at once consecrated to Him in view of their being so offered, or of austerities to be undergone. For offering and austerity, sacrifice and suffering, are equally calculated to appease an offended deity's wrath or win his goodwill.[4]

The

Leviticus 27, could permit it to be redeemed. But to substitute an unclean for a clean beast that had been vowed, or an imperfect victim for a flawless one, was to court with certainty the divine displeasure.[4]

It is often difficult to distinguish a vow from an

Cenchreae, for he had a vow. In Acts 21:23 we hear of four men who, having a vow on them, had their heads shaved at Paul's expense. Among the ancient Chatti, as Tacitus relates (Germania, 31), young men allowed their hair and beards to grow, and vowed to court danger in that guise until they each had slain an enemy."[4]

In Christianity, the vow has more weight than an oath when approached from the view that it binds one to God whereas the oath binds one to man.[6] This was explained further by St. Thomas Aquinas, who said:

The obligation both of a vow and of an oath arises from something Divine; but in different ways. For the obligation of a vow arises from the fidelity we owe God, which binds us to fulfil our promises to Him. On the other hand, the obligation of an oath arises from the reverence we owe Him which binds us to fulfil our promises to Him.[6]

See also

References

  1. ^ Claire Elise Campton (17 August 2016). "Writing your own wedding vows". Claire Elise Photography. Retrieved 17 August 2016.
  2. ISBN 9781625644985
    .
  3. ^
    ISBN 0809140667
    .
  4. ^ a b c d e f g  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Conybeare, Frederick Cornwallis (1911). "Vow". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 219.
  5. ^ Professor A. Bel in paper Quelque rites pour obtenir la pluie, in xivme Congres des Orientalistes (Alger, 1905).
  6. ^
    ISBN 9781602065574
    .

External links
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