Thesis: If we want to have good teaching about the place of marriage/relationship in the Christian life we must start with serious reflection on the Persons of the Trinity.
At the heart of the Creator God there are relationships between three Persons bound together by a mutual indwelling of Love. These Persons do not exist as mere modes of an ultimately unknowable divine being, but this God has His being substantially in three Persons - Father, Son and Spirit. These Persons are not confused though they are united in the one Godhead. Christians worship a God for whom love and relationship are foundational rather than secondary activities. Each Person is in ordered relationship with the other two Persons. The creative and redemptive activity of God is an outworking of this reality.
Notice that in the New Testament two of the Persons are given the familial descriptions of Father and Son. A proper understanding of the funtion of divine analogy means that we cannot think of these titles as being projections of our limited experience of family relationships onto the divine, but that the created order reflects what is in accord with the divine nature. Human fathers and sons, therefore, are analogies of the higher reality, rather than the reverse. Since God has chosen to reveal Himself in familial terms we must approach any discussion of the question of family and relationships with the utmost seriousness. It is unfortunate that books on marriage are frequently filed under Christian Living rather than Theology in our bookstores. This may be an indication that the authors mistakenly feel that serious theology has no place in these texts. I would beg to differ.
The consequence is that when humanity is created in Genesis 1:26-27 they are deliberately brought in to a sphere of already existing relationships between God and Creation. They are not merely creatures, but are intended to share in the rule over Creation that God as Father, Son & Spirit already enjoys. They are more like their Creator than what He has created. They have the capacity to relate to what is Other. They are given blessings before they are given instructions (Gen 1: 28-30). The commissions to fill the earth and rule over all animals should be seen as expressions of the Divine-Human relationship rather than separate from it.
The primary purpose of created humanity was not to be either gardeners or procreators, but to enjoy and participate in the sphere of divine relationships. Male and Female were created not for each other but for God. In the tasks of each they celebrate the other-person centred love that they were meant to enjoy with God.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
Reformed Romantics: a few thoughts
I have now reached the age where wedding invitations have slowed to a trickle. This is a great comfort to me. I am now spared from a succession of steamy afternoons in non-airconditioned sandstone monstrosities while a pair of dear friends plight their eternal troth, not to mention the neverending argument with She Who Must Be Obeyed as to whether it is important to "like" the purchased wedding present. [I am of the opinion that the first item that can be located on the register that is within budget is the ideal present. I don't care what it looks like or what it does - if the Happy Couple put it on there then they will be overjoyed to receive it. Let all the Men say 'Aye'!] My present occupation also means that I am now more likely to be conducting a wedding service than having to stay awake through one. The demographics of my faith community peers (mostly in their early 30s) means that most of them have paired up now anyway.
Except for those who haven't.
I am friends with a number of single Christian men and women whose youth (like mine) is slowly fading. They are, almost without exception, godly and kind people. For some their singleness (note: I hate that word but have yet to come up with a better one) is a peripheral fact of life. For others it is a crushing burden that impairs their natural Christian joy. These people are not selfish or immature or "unwilling to settle". The door to romance has simple not been opened to them up to this point.
The advice given out to the unmarried in our Christian circles is often very unhelpful, and I believe this stems from a lack of sufficiently theological reflection on the place of marriage. Several years ago I sat in a Men's Hour led by a pastor whom I greatly respect. His advice to the young men was that they had no excuse not to get married as there were more women than men numerically in the church, so if they didn't find a husband there then they would be tempted to seek an unbeliever who would most likely lead them away from faith. The implication of this, of course, was that if any single women fell away under this shepherd's leadership then it wasn't really his fault but was instead the fault of the young men for not "snapping her up quick enough". I had thought that this sort of advice was no longer given, until I heard it being basically repeated by another pastor I greatly respect several weeks ago.
Over the last few years I have been reflecting that perhaps some of the pain being felt by single Christians today is a result of a dysfunction in our overall view of what Christian marriage could and should be. In my final year at Moore College I did a theology paper on Marriage & Children in response to the rise of the Quiverfull and Childfree Christianity movements. As I did my research I came to the conclusion that much of the "Christian" view on marriage is not much more than natural theology blended with Anglo-middle-class morality. Even in solidly evangelical works such as those by Christopher Ash the theological focus is firmly on Genesis 1-3. Almost nothing is said about the deeply familial language of trinitarian relationships, not to mention the radical re-evaluation of our social patterns that the Cross of Christ must bring. In light of this, it is not surprising that the messages of encouragement in the chapters on Singleness in many books rings resoundingly hollow.
I believe that we need to start again. We need to take a fresh look at how the Gospel should shape our patterns of love, marriage, family, and children so that the Christian pattern of living is transformative rather than conformative. It will mean rethinking how we order our public gatherings, how we structure our youth and children's ministries to be informed by these principles. It will mean repenting of hopes that were never meant to be and of finding joy where we never thought possible for it to be found.
I'm planning on writing these posts as I go. While I have done some work on this area in the past, there is a lot which I have not yet thought about. I'm hoping that as I put some of my ideas out there that many of my readers (whether married or single) may challenge me on my exegesis and interpretation.
Except for those who haven't.
I am friends with a number of single Christian men and women whose youth (like mine) is slowly fading. They are, almost without exception, godly and kind people. For some their singleness (note: I hate that word but have yet to come up with a better one) is a peripheral fact of life. For others it is a crushing burden that impairs their natural Christian joy. These people are not selfish or immature or "unwilling to settle". The door to romance has simple not been opened to them up to this point.
The advice given out to the unmarried in our Christian circles is often very unhelpful, and I believe this stems from a lack of sufficiently theological reflection on the place of marriage. Several years ago I sat in a Men's Hour led by a pastor whom I greatly respect. His advice to the young men was that they had no excuse not to get married as there were more women than men numerically in the church, so if they didn't find a husband there then they would be tempted to seek an unbeliever who would most likely lead them away from faith. The implication of this, of course, was that if any single women fell away under this shepherd's leadership then it wasn't really his fault but was instead the fault of the young men for not "snapping her up quick enough". I had thought that this sort of advice was no longer given, until I heard it being basically repeated by another pastor I greatly respect several weeks ago.
Over the last few years I have been reflecting that perhaps some of the pain being felt by single Christians today is a result of a dysfunction in our overall view of what Christian marriage could and should be. In my final year at Moore College I did a theology paper on Marriage & Children in response to the rise of the Quiverfull and Childfree Christianity movements. As I did my research I came to the conclusion that much of the "Christian" view on marriage is not much more than natural theology blended with Anglo-middle-class morality. Even in solidly evangelical works such as those by Christopher Ash the theological focus is firmly on Genesis 1-3. Almost nothing is said about the deeply familial language of trinitarian relationships, not to mention the radical re-evaluation of our social patterns that the Cross of Christ must bring. In light of this, it is not surprising that the messages of encouragement in the chapters on Singleness in many books rings resoundingly hollow.
I believe that we need to start again. We need to take a fresh look at how the Gospel should shape our patterns of love, marriage, family, and children so that the Christian pattern of living is transformative rather than conformative. It will mean rethinking how we order our public gatherings, how we structure our youth and children's ministries to be informed by these principles. It will mean repenting of hopes that were never meant to be and of finding joy where we never thought possible for it to be found.
I'm planning on writing these posts as I go. While I have done some work on this area in the past, there is a lot which I have not yet thought about. I'm hoping that as I put some of my ideas out there that many of my readers (whether married or single) may challenge me on my exegesis and interpretation.
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