Abstract
<jats:p>The monograph by Rev. Andrzej Wójcik “Where Does Marriage Come From? Why Lawyers Should Know the Anthropological Answer to This Question” argues that every legal regulation of marriage and family presupposes a specific vision of the human person, the body, sex, and freedom. The author claims that both state and canon lawyers inevitably work with an implicit anthropology, which shapes the interpretation and application of norms even when it remains unreflected. The starting point is the tension between nature and freedom, visible in contemporary bioethical and legislative disputes about human life, marriage, and family, and the question whether nature can serve as a valid source and measure for legal norms. Wójcik reconstructs the classical, realist conception of natural law and the person, and confronts it with a nominalist‑voluntarist current (including William Ockham, Martin Luther, Hans Kelsen), which separates right from the ontological order and subordinates it to arbitrary will. At the centre stands matrimonial consent as an act of will that does not create an arbitrary contract but actualises the pre‑existing structure of man and woman, interpreted through the anthropology of Karol Wojtyła – John Paul II. The book presents marriage as “one flesh” that is both an ontological bond and an original legal relationship of mutual belonging and self‑gift, from which further rights and obligations arise. Indissolubility is thus interpreted not as an external limitation of freedom but as its highest realisation, grounding the person’s sovereignty in relation to the state and its legislation. In a comparative perspective the author analyses the evolution of concordat models (especially in Spain and Poland) and the divergence between Catholic and Protestant understandings of marriage, with particular attention to divorce and the relation between canon and civil law. The study concludes that without an explicit and adequate anthropology of marriage, legal practice cannot coherently safeguard human dignity, the common good, and the stability of the marital institution.</jats:p>