Theodoret of Cyrus: Marriage is for Enjoyment

Forbidding marriage, requiring abstinence from foods which God created for partaking with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth (v.3): they call marriage and most foods defiled so as to insult the creator of such things. He made them for enjoyment, of course, so that those who partake of them might use the occasion for thanksgiving and sing the praises of their source. The phrase forbidding marriage was well put: without vilifying celibacy and abstinence, he criticizes those who oblige people by law to adopt them.

- Theodoret of Cyrus (around A.D. 393 to around A.D. 457), Commentary on 1 Timothy, Chapter 4, in Theodoret of Cyrus, Commentary on the Letters of St. Paul, Volume 2, pp. 221-22 (2001), Robert C. Hill translator.