Toward a Biblical Theology of Marriage - New Testament (2)

1.         Godhead, Relationship and Marriage

The relationship between Christ and the Church is almost as significant as the relationships within the Trinity — diminished only by its being secondary, rather than primary, in defining the nature of God — for in that relationship we find the key to salvation itself.

It is because God can do something in relation to us — something which brings us into ‘union with Christ’ — that salvation is effected through Christ’s death on the cross and our union with him in his death.

Furthermore, we need to understand that this ‘marriage’ between the Creator-Redeemer God and his created-redeemed people is possible because of the nature of God himself. God is one who can be in a marital relationship.

An important insight into the nature of persons in the Trinity is provided by the notion of ‘perichoresis’. What this means is that each person in the Trinity is defined in terms of relationship with the others.

This is easy to grasp when we think of terms like ‘Father’ and ‘Son’. One can be an individual on one’s own, but one cannot be a father without a corresponding child or a ‘son’ without a parent.

So both the differences between and identities of the persons of the Trinity arise from their distinct relationship to the others.

But the marital relationship between Christ and the Church shows that God has a further relational potential — to relate to something outside himself, something which is not his own self, but whose qualities are such that God can relate to it almost, we might say, on equal terms. After all, what is a marriage if not a relationship between beings who are profoundly alike — or as Adam’s words in Genesis 2:23 put it, “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”?

2.         The Genesis of Marriage

In Ephesians 5, as we have noted, the Apostle applies the principles of Genesis 2:24 to Christ and the Church. But there are other ‘Christological’ elements of New Testament theology drawn from the narrative of Genesis 1-3.

Philippians 2:6-8, for example, is generally agreed to be contrasting the behaviour of Adam with that of Christ who, “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant” (cf Gen 3:5).

Or again, Christ’s lordship over all things may be seen as the ultimate fulfilment of the Genesis mandate. When Ephesians 1:22 speaks of all things being under Christ’s feet, it echoes the language of Psalm 8 (see v 6) which, with its reference to “all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea (vv 7-8) is itself clearly echoing Genesis 1:28:

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

J V Fesko, Academic Dean and Professor of Systematic Theology and Historical Theology at Westminster Seminary, California, helpfully explores this Christological reading of Genesis in his Last Things First: Unlocking Genesis 1-3 with the Christ of Eschatology (Fearn Ross-shire Great Britain: Mentor, 2007).

In the present context, we would note that a Christological reading of Genesis 2 is particularly helpful in understanding the profound depths of the Christ-Church relationship.

It may seem odd, for example, to think of Christ as in any sense resembling Adam at the point of the latter being put in the Garden to til and keep it. But it has been pointed out elsewhere that the language of Genesis 2 at this point parallels the priestly task of the Levites in relationship to the tabernacle — the dwelling-place of God — and that the tabernacle itself represents a miniature ‘Eden’ (see Gregory K Beale, ‘Eden, the Temple and the Church’s Mission in the New Creation’, JETS 48:1, 2005, 5–31).

And to think of Christ as the ‘temple keeper’ is by no means a demeaning of his person or his task.

Provided, therefore, we keep in mind that Adam is, in the words of Romans 5:15, “a pattern of the one to come” rather than the reality itself, it is perfectly legitimate to apply narrative details concerning him to the one of whom he is a pattern — in other words, to get clues as to how we should understand Christ by reading the account of Adam.

This being the case, however, we may also understand from the narrative of Genesis something about the relationship between Christ and the Church.

Thus, once again, it may seem odd, to say the least, to appear to suggest something lacking in Christ’s nature when we read in Genesis 2:18 that it was not good for the man to be alone and apply this to Christ.

Yet a ‘not good’ is not the same as a ‘bad’. To put it another way, ‘not having reached perfection’ is not the same as ‘having an imperfection. Specifically, when we read in Hebrews 2:10 that Christ was made perfect through suffering, this doesn’t mean there was something wrong with him.

Rather, we might think of a cake which, until it is baked is not finished, but is not ‘going wrong’ in the earlier stages of its preparation. And so Adam’s condition of ‘not good’ does not imply a fault in creation, but simply that the job is not yet finished.

Yet surely to suggest that Christ, like Adam, needed a ‘helper’ implies an inadequacy? In reply, we would simply point to what the New Testament itself declares, and observe that in relation to creation a ‘helper’ is precisely what Christ must and will have, and that this helper is his Church:

¹⁸ All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹ that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. (2 Cor 5:18-19)

Again,

²⁸ Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Matthew 19:28, NIV)

Or again,

²² And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, ²³ which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. (Eph 1:22-23, NIV)

What, then, of Eve’s origin from Adam? Clearly the physical details do not apply, yet the Puritan writer William Gurnall was happy to draw a spiritual comparison (and I suspect from his Latin reference may have got this from an earlier source):

E latere Christi morientis exstitit ecclesia – the church is taken out of dying Jesus’ side, as Eve out of sleeping Adam’s. (The Christian in Complete Armour, Part 11, ‘Justifying Faith, as to its Nature)

Furthermore, the creation of Eve from Adam, if applied to the Church, is a reminder that human beings derive their nature from that of the one for whom they are made, for we are not just another creature, but the very ‘image of God’.

We should not forget that God has made us to be “conformed to the likeness of his Son” (Rom 8:29), and that therefore we will one day ourselves be images of the image (cf 1 Cor 15:49; 2 Cor 3:18; Col 3:9). Hence our claim above that we may legitimately apply spiritually to the Church in relation to Christ what Adam said physically of Eve:

This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh ...

3.         The Gender of God

And this itself helps us answer the question as to in what sense God is ‘gendered’. In a world where godesses were commonplace, the Bible is unequivocal in applying the male gender to God.

Yet clearly a God without physical ‘parts’ is not ‘a man’, or even, in the biological sense, ‘male’.

Even so, he remains ‘he’, and as we have seen, in the marital relationship between God and Israel, he is the husband and Israel the bride.

Some might suggest this is a merely social convention, appropriate to a world in which patriarchy was the norm. But as we have seen above, the marital relationship between God and Israel, fulfilled in the relationship between Christ and the Church, is of too profound a significance to relegate to a matter of cultural convention.

Rather, we should see that the ‘masculinity’ of God, like the ‘Fatherhood’ of the Father or ‘Sonship’ of the Son, is relational — though in this case the relationship is not within the godhead, but rather between the godhead and that which is created to be the image of God.

The Creator-Redeemer God is ‘he’ in relation to that which he has created and redeemed — that which is his bride and in union with which he brings to pefection an image of his own self to which he will finally relate ‘face to face’ (cf Ex 33:11; Dt 5:4; 1 Cor 13:12).

This is the profound truth about marriage, and one which ought to govern our thinking.

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Toward a Biblical Theology of Marriage - New Testament (1)

A Biblical Theology of Marriage — the New Covenant

1.         From Old Testament to New

The Old Testament contains two contrasting narratives regarding marriage. On the one hand, there is the decline we looked at in session 1 ‘from the garden to the harem’. The great king Solomon accumulates wives and concubines who, in the end, prove to be his downfall.

On the other hand, there is a clear understanding throughout the history of Israel that the nation stands in a ‘marital’ relationship with God — a relationship that is not abandoned by God, despite the unfaithfulness of the nation.

Hence in Jeremiah 3:14 we read,

¹⁴ “Return, faithless people,” declares the Lord, “for I am your husband. I will choose you — one from a town and two from a clan — and bring you to Zion.”

This, despite the circumstances of v 20:

“But like a woman unfaithful to her husband, so you have been unfaithful to me, O house of Israel,” declares the Lord.

Significantly, the New Covenant promise Jeremiah makes reference to this marital relationship:

³¹ “The time is coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. ³² It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. (Jer 31:31-32)

This New Covenant is to be unbreakable (see vv 33-34), and so we may assume that the people of God will at last be his faithful bride. However, at the end of the Old Testament, that hope remains yet to be fulfilled. The arrival of Jesus signals its fulfilment.

2.         The Bridegroom Comes

Within Jesus’ own ministry, there are already hints at the ‘bridegroom’ role he plays. John’s gospel records that John the Baptist clearly understood the implications of the Christ’s coming in these terms:

²⁸ You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Christ but am sent ahead of him.’ ²⁹ The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. ³⁰ He must become greater; I must become less. (John 3:28-30)

The way that John describes the revelation of Christ’s glory at the wedding at Cana in Galilee John 2:1-11 is probably also meant to be seen as picking up this motif.

In the Synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) there are also references to Jesus as the bridegroom. In Matthew 9, challenged as to why his disciples do not fast, Jesus replies,

How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast. (9:15; cf Mk 2:19-20; Lk 5:34-35)

In the parables, the return of the Messiah is also depicted in terms of the arrival of a bridegroom for a wedding feast (Matt 25:1-13), and the inauguration of the kingdom is compared to a wedding feast (Matt 22:1-14).

3.         Christ the Bridegroom

It is in the epistles (including Revelation), however, that we see the most developed understanding of Christ’s role as the bridegroom.

This ought not to worry us unduly. In the gospels, it is possible for Jesus to say to Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” (Mk 8:29), or for the disciples to ask in terror, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him.” (Mk 4:41). At this point, there are a number of possible answers (though only one correct one).

By the time we get to the epistles, however, the post resurrection-Christ and the Holy Spirit in the apostles, have already done their work, and those questions now receive definitive answers.

Thus, since Christ is the one in whom “the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form” (Col 2:9), all the Old Testament promises regarding God as the husband of Israel are transferred to Christ as the husband of the Church.

Indeed the apostle Paul sees his own apostolic role as that of a marriage-broker. In 2 Corinthians 11:2, he writes,

² I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him.

And in the book of Revelation, the final ushering-in of the kingdom is depicted as the revealing of a bride for the Saviour-Messiah:

² I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. (Rev 21:2)

The last dialogue in the Bible is between the Spirit in the earthly Church and the longed-for Bridegroom:

¹⁷ The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” [...] ²⁰ He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. (Rev 22:17,20)

In fact there may be a link theologically between the word spoken in v 17 above and the clearly primitive (because it is in Aramaic) invocation recorded in 1 Corinthians 16:22, where Paul writes, “Marana tha” (“Come, O Lord!”, NIV)

Arguably, this invocation (presumably quoted rather than coined by the apostle) is the same voice of “the Spirit and the bride” we read in Revelation — in other words the understanding of the Church as the ‘waiting bride’ was a very early tradition. Certainly we would not have to look far for the sources of such a tradition, for of course it is as old as the Old Testament itself.

4.         Marriage and Salvation

It would be fair to say, furthermore, that Paul’s ‘marital’ understanding of the relationship between Christ and the Church is central to his soteriology — his understanding of salvation.

In Romans 7, for example, the Christian community is likened to a woman whose husband has died, freeing her to marry another.

² For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. ³ So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man. (Rom 7:2-3)

The illustration is complex, however, because the Church is itself depicted as dying:

⁴ So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. (Rom 7:4)

This may seem muddled, but the complication arises because Christ is both the husband who has died and the live husband. When he dies, he dies under the law — he is in the place of our first ‘husband’. But we also die with him (a fact expressed by our baptism ‘into his death’).

The same background thinking is present in Galatians :

¹⁹ ... through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. ²⁰ I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. (Gal 2:19-20a)

¹³ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” (Gal 3:13)

Our old ‘husband’, the law of sin and death, dies on the cross when Christ dies for us. What is often overlooked, however, is that not only does Christ die for us, but we die with him. There is an identity between the ‘sinful sinner’ (namely ourselves) and the ‘sinless sin-bearer’ who is Christ. And this identification depends on the marital relationship between the Redeemer and the redeemed.

5.         The Body of Christ

Anyone reading Paul will soon discover his liking for ‘body’ language in relation to the Church. In Romans 13 and 1 Corinthians 12 particularly, the church is compared to a body with many parts, so each believer is encouraged to see that they do not have to be a ‘Jack of All Trades’, but rather have particular (and limited) gifts which contribute to the life of the whole.

This is not just a convenient illustration, however. We might make the same point in other ways, for example by talking about an army with different units or a city with different trades.

The body language Paul uses stems from his understanding that the Church is specifically Christ’s body. And it is his body because of its marital union with him.

In 1 Corinthians 6, for example, he writes,

¹⁶ Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” ¹⁷ But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

This idea is most fully developed, however, in Ephesians 5. Here, husbands and wives are urged to see themselves as living in a symbiotic relationship which reflects the relationship between Christ and the Church. Thus he writes,

²⁸ ... husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. [...] ²⁹ After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church — ³⁰ for we are members of his body. (Eph 5:28a,29-30)

And the rationale for this is drawn directly from the second chapter of Genesis, which Paul immediately quotes from to reinforce his argument:

³¹ “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” ³² This is a profound mystery — but I am talking about Christ and the church. (Eph 5:31-32)

For Paul, this is another example of biblical typology, where something found in the Old Testament reaches its fulfilment in the events of the New. In Colossians 2, Paul applies this to festivals, new moons and the Sabbath:

¹⁷ These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. (Col 2:17)

Here in Ephesians, he sees the ‘one flesh union’ of married couples, beginning with Adam and Eve, as fulfilled in Christ and the Church. These two also become ‘one’, which is how Paul can go on to say so categorically that we died with Christ, we are raised with Christ and even that we are circumcised in him (Col 2:11).

The sixteenth century Reformer, Martin Luther, made great play of this in his understanding of salvation. Thus he wrote,

By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh. And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage — indeed the most perfect of all marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage — it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has Christ claims as his own. Let us compare these and we shall see inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ’s, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul’s; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride’s and bestow upon her the things that are his. If he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers? (LW 31:35)

Luther, I think, captures well the implications and application of the Pauline position.

6.         The Genesis of Marriage

What we must understand from this, therefore, is that marriage is not simply a human ordinance or a social construct. Rather, as the Roman Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx rightly says, it is a ‘saving mystery’. The Church of England reflects this understanding in its marriage service, where the Book of Common Prayer says,

... holy Matrimony ... is an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church ...

Human marriage takes its being from something far more significant than a social convention, a biological imperative or a legal construct.

Human marriage ultimately mirrors the relationship between the Creator-Redeemer God and his created-redeemed people, which is a saving relationship not just because of the love of God for his people, but because of the union of Christ with the Church.

The linguist and social theorist Noam Chomksy once coined the term ‘deep structures’ to talk about those aspects of language which lie beyond the mere use of ‘names for objects’ and ‘words for actions’ — aspects we codify as ‘grammar’, but which make up a kind of fundamental, inbuilt pattern that shapes all language.

In a similar way, we might say that theologically speaking, marriage is part of call the ‘deep structures’ of the universe — as foundational to reality as ‘love’, ‘goodness’ and ‘personhood’. For in that which is reflected in human marriage we find the key to salvation itself. It is because God can do something in relation to us — something which brings us into ‘union with Christ’ — that salvation is effected through Christ’s death on the cross and our union with him in his death.

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Toward a Biblical Theology of Marriage - Old Testament

Some preliminary notes for the unit I'm doing in the Chelmsford Diocesan Course in Christian Studies.

‘Cultural’ and ‘Essential’ Features of Marriage

Consider the narrative of Jacob’s marriage to Rachel (the daughter of Laban, his uncle on his mother’s side):

¹⁵ Laban said to him, “Just because you are a relative of mine, should you work for me for nothing? Tell me what your wages should be.” ¹⁶ Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. ¹⁷ Leah had weak eyes, but Rachel was lovely in form, and beautiful. ¹⁸ Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, “I’ll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel.” ¹⁹ Laban said, “It’s better that I give her to you than to some other man. Stay here with me.” ²⁰ So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. ²¹ Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to lie with her.” ²² So Laban brought together all the people of the place and gave a feast. ²³ But when evening came, he took his daughter Leah and gave her to Jacob, and Jacob lay with her. ²⁴ And Laban gave his servant girl Zilpah to his daughter as her maidservant. ²⁵ When morning came, there was Leah! So Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn’t I? Why have you deceived me?” ²⁶ Laban replied, “It is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one. ²⁷ Finish this daughter’s bridal week; then we will give you the younger one also, in return for another seven years of work.” (Gen 29:15-27, NIV)

What features are ‘cultural’, what are ‘essential’ — which might vary and which might we say would be necessary features of marriage. Eg: marriage between relatives, daughters under the authority of their fathers, polygamy, love consummation as the ‘seal’ of marriage.

The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England affirm that, “It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, and utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and men’s manners, so that nothing be ordained against God’s Word.” (Article XXXIV, ‘Of the Traditions of the Church’)

The difference between what is variable and what is non-variable is what is ‘against God’s word’. So we need to be looking there, and to do that we will start with outlining a ‘biblical theology’ of marriage.
 

Developing a ‘Biblical Theology’ of Marriage

Biblical theology “follows the movement and process of God’s revelation in the Bible ... by which revelation unfolds and moves toward the goal which is God’s final revelation of his purposes in Jesus Christ” (Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel and Kingdom: A Christian Interpretation of the Old Testament [Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1981] 40).

One classic way of doing this is to look at God’s people’s experience of God’s blessing, which in the Old Testament is basically a matter of Israel’s geo-political history of rise and fall.

But the same can be done with marriage. The Old Testament begins with a marriage. In Genesis 2:23, the newly-formed Eve is brought to Adam, after which we read in 2:24 words applying what has just happened to this first human couple to all future marriages:

²⁴ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24, NIV)

But sexuality is the first victim of the Fall. Immediately after they have fallen for the serpent’s temptation, we read,

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. (Gen 3:7)

Furthermore the text signals the significance of this earlier on. In Genesis 2:25 we read, “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”

But then immediately after this, in 3:1, we read, “The serpent was more crafty than any other creature the Lord had made.”

And this is important, because he Hebrew word here for crafty is ārum, but the Hebrew for ‘naked’ is arumim. They look and sound very similar in Hebrew, and so there is a play on the words. It is as if we had said the couple were nude but the serpent was shrewd.

In other words, the corruption of human sexuality is central to the narrative of the Fall. And this has implications for the development of scripture.
 

From the Garden to the Harem

If we look at salvation history in terms of geo-political blessing, the high point of the Old Testament comes in the reign of Solomon, the Golden Age when “Judah and Israel, from Dan to Beersheba lived in safety, each man under his own vine and fig tree” (1 Ki 4:25).

Ironically, however, if we look at that same history in terms of the development of marriage, Solomon’s reign is something of an historic low, as 1 Kings 11:1-6 comprehensively explains:

King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. ² They were from nations about which the LORD had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. ³ He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. ⁴ As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been. ⁵ He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech the detestable god of the Ammonites. ⁶ So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the LORD; he did not follow the LORD completely, as David his father had done. (1 Kings 11:1-6, NIV)

The descent begins, however, early on. In Genesis 4, the narrative of Cain’s line finishes with the person of Lamech, who is not just the first recorded polygamist but a thoroughly unpleasant character who revels in his reputation for violence:

²³ Lamech said to his wives, “Adah and Zillah, listen to me; wives of Lamech, hear my words. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me. ²⁴ If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times.” (Gen 4:23-24, NIV)

And whilst the polygamy of the patriarchs is taken for granted, far from being depicted in terms of success or blessing, the accompanying marital strife is laid out for all to see.

And in this connection, we may make an interesting observation about Job. Whilst Job is pictured as having received God’s blessing in superlative terms — at the beginning of the book he has seven sons, three daughters, seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and a large number of servants — we only read of one wife (1:2-3, cf 2:9-10).

And at the end of his story, where his blessing is restored many-fold, there is still no mention of any increase in his complement of spouses!

Thus whilst polygamy may have been a widespread practice, there is nothing to suggest it was an idealized goal. On the contrary, Solomon’s polygamy is connected to his downfall.

We may also plausibly argue that the Song of Songs, which is directly linked to Solomon, contains a critique of his profligacy in the marriage area.

At the beginning of the Song, the girl, who is the chief voice throughout, speaks of her own body metaphorically as a vineyard:

⁶ Do not stare at me because I am dark, because I am darkened by the sun. My mother’s sons were angry with me and made me take care of the vineyards; my own vineyard I have neglected.

This vineyard metaphor remerges at the end of the Song. In 8:12, the girl declares “my own vineyard is mine to give”. But notice how from v 11 she contrasts this with the ‘vineyard policy’ of Solomon:

¹¹ Solomon had a vineyard in Baal Hamon; he let out his vineyard to tenants. Each was to bring for its fruit a thousand shekels of silver. ¹² But my own vineyard is mine to give; the thousand shekels are for you, O Solomon, and two hundred are for those who tend its fruit.

Solomon is a vineyard rentier. He has vineyards in abundance — so many he has no use for them or their fruit and rents them out to others.

But the girl has one ‘vineyard’ — and here we must put inverted commas round the word, for the vineyard here is her body — yet though this ‘vineyard’ may have suffered neglect, it is hers to give as a gift, and she gives it to the one person she loves.
 

From the Garden to the Temple

So when it comes to the national practice of marriage in Israel, we observe a kind of ‘Rake’s Progress’ — from early innocence to kingly abandon.

At the same time, however, there is throughout the Old Testament a strongly ‘spiritualized’ view of marriage as concerning God’s relationship with Israel.

This is first alluded to directly in negative terms. From Exodus 34:15 onwards, spiritual unfaithfulness is depicted in terms of prostitution:

¹⁵ “Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. ¹⁶ And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same. (Exodus 34:15-16, NIV)

And throughout the Old Testament, Israel’s relationship with God often gets the same treatment. The book to read is Raymond Ortlund, God’s Unfaithful Wife: A Biblical Theology of Spiritual Adultery (IVP 2003)

So, for example, the whole book of Hosea is built around the point made in 1:2

² When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him, “Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord.”

(Notice, incidentally, the message this has for those who believe ‘God’s plan for your life’ means lots of wonderful blessings will come to you. It ain’t necessarily so.)

This theme is developed further in the words of judgement pronounced in the frank language of 2:2

² “Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.

And yet the very idea of unfaithfulness presumes the possibility of faithfulness, and so we read how judgement will be followed by restoration:

¹⁴ “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. ¹⁵ There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. ¹⁶ “In that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master [Baal].’ ¹⁷ I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked. [...] ¹⁹ I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. ²⁰ I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord. (Hos 2:14-17, 19-20)

This promise of a restored marriage between God and Israel is also found in Isaiah. In 54:6-8 we read,

⁶ The Lord will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit— a wife who married young, only to be rejected,” says your God. ⁷ “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. ⁸ In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,” says the Lord your Redeemer.

And in 62:4–5 we read this:

⁴ No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; for the Lord will take delight in you, and your land will be married. ⁵ As a young man marries a maiden, so will your sons marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.

Isaiah also, incidentally, contains a famous section which is a love-song for the Lord’s vineyard (5:1-7). It begins,

¹ I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. ² He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well.

And then in v 7 we read,

⁷ The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of his delight. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.

We may well detect echoes here of the imagery of the Song of Solomon.

Perhaps the most telling, and the most graphic, depiction of the marital relationship between the Lord and Israel, however, comes in the book of Ezekiel, where we read this in chapter 16.

First, we read how God rescued Israel like a foundling baby girl:

⁴ On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. ⁵ No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised. ⁶ Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, “Live!” ⁷ I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels.

Then we read of this girl reaching sexual maturity

Your breasts were formed and your hair grew, you who were naked and bare. ⁸ Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love ...

The word ‘love’ here is specifically sexual. In 23:17 the scene has shifted to Israel and the Babylonians:

¹⁷ Then the Babylonians came to her, to the bed of love, and in their lust they defiled her.

But at this early stage in Ezekiel, maturity is responded to by God entering into a marital covenant. In 16:8b, we go on to read,

... I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness.

The imagery here parallels that of the book of Ruth, specifically where the pleasantly-merry Boaz wakes up to discover a woman sleeping at his feet:

⁷ When Boaz had finished eating and drinking and was in good spirits, he went over to lie down at the far end of the grain pile. Ruth approached quietly, uncovered his feet and lay down. ⁸ In the middle of the night something startled the man, and he turned and discovered a woman lying at his feet. ⁹ “Who are you?” he asked. “I am your servant Ruth,” she said. “Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a kinsman-redeemer.” (Ruth 3:7-9)

And then we read that God adds to the gesture a covenant oath:

I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine.

After that, things go well for a while as God enhances the beauty of his new bride:

⁹ I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. ¹⁰ I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put leather sandals on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments. ¹¹ I adorned you with jewelry: I put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck, ¹² and I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. ¹³ So you were adorned with gold and silver; your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. Your food was fine flour, honey and olive oil. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen. ¹⁴ And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign Lord.

But then things start to go wrong,

¹⁵ But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute. You lavished your favors on anyone who passed by and your beauty became his.

And once again are back to the theme of whoredom and judgement.

And just as with Israel’s geo-political history, although the return from Exile brings a partial restoration, the promises of the prophets seemed unfulfilled at the end of the Scriptural narrative.
 

What is marriage?

From ‘the story so far’, however, we can discern two important things. First, marriage is defined by sex and covenant.

And important part of this covenant relationship is specifically sexual exclusivity. You can have other friends, but when it comes to the marriage relationship, sexual unfaithfulness is the deal-breaker. Hence the Ten Commandments include the command not to commit adultery, and the penalty for adultery is death (Lev 20:10).

Meanwhile the existence of the marriage itself is defined by a binding covenant, as we have seen in Ezekiel. This covenant may be revoked — it is possible to divorce, but even at this stage, divorce is subject to divine dispproval.

In Malachi 2 comes this judgement which I think is as clear as any of the judgements on other aspects of social injustice elsewhere in the prophets:

¹³ Another thing you do: You flood the Lord’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. ¹⁴ You ask, “Why?” It is because the Lord is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant. ¹⁵ Has not the Lord made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. ¹⁶ “I hate divorce,” says the Lord God of Israel, “and I hate a man’s covering himself with violence as well as with his garment,” says the Lord Almighty. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith. (Mal 2:13-16)

The second thing we discern is that the relationship between the Creator, Redeemer God and his created, redeemed people is, in a sense, ‘marital’.

When we come into the New Testament, we see this developed further in the relationship between Christ and the Church.

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Technology and sexuality: how we got where we are

I posted yesterday on the question of the involvement of the law in the institution of marriage. This has prompted a couple of replies, one of which observed (as, I think, did Professor Julian Rivers in his evidence to the Committee considering the same-sex marriage bill) that the abolition of marriage was tried (and failed) in the early Soviet Union.

There are, however, a number of things that have allowed a shift in our own national sexual practices which were unknown to earlier generations, including the early Soviet Union.

One is massive technological change in the field of medicine. Prior to the advent of antibiotics, gonorrhea and syphilis were not just potential consequences of sexual promiscuity but effectively untreatable and, in the case of syphilis, fatal. By contrast, the advent of effective treatments has led to a lowering of restraint, as we have also seen recently in the case of MSM (men having sex with men) and HIV (see here).

A second technological change is, of course, in the field of contraception, which undoubtedly increased the rates of extra-marital sex, particularly with the advent of the contraceptive pill in the 1960s, by lowering the risk of an unwanted child. Actually this was precisely one of the reasons why the Church of England opposed the availability of artificial contraception and what it warned would happen, back in its debates around the 1930s.

The third technological change was the advent of legal abortion. I call this a technological change because although the technology to carry out abortions with minimal risk to the life and health of the mother was there before the 1960s, the fact that it was not normally legal kept the technology from public access. Once again, this added to people's sense of security when engaging in intercourse without a desire for conception to occur (usually, though not always, outside marriage).

To these three technologies must finally be added a change in the attitude to, and provision of publicly-funded financial support for, single mothers. Previously, a child would have been regarded as the financial responsibility of its parents. Where this provision broke down there was the extended family to help and, beyond that, charities including the Church. In the post-war years, the removal of a sense of 'fault' in bearing an illegitimate child was combined with a policy of providing aid through public funds raised by taxation.

That, of course, itself depends on three things. One is the presumption by those in government that this is a right policy to follow. The second is the payment of taxes. And the third is wealth - a society following such a policy must be generating enough wealth to pay for it.

So whilst some may appeal to a change in human attitudes as driving the current changes in social practice, I would venture to suggest it is at least as much changes in human technology and the social economy that have actually driven the process.

We are where we are because we can, in more than one sense, afford to be there for the time being.

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Marriage and Democracy -- what's law got to do with it?

While Professor Julian Rivers was giving evidence to (or, as it looked to me, being interrogated by) the Parliamentary Committee for the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Bill, he made what seemed to me a rather good point, which was to question why there should be any state involvement in marriage at all.

One of the justifications for the government’s proposed change, which has been deployed by a number of politicians and pundits, is that the Church doesn’t own marriage, and indeed it doesn’t, as you can discover for yourself by reading Edward Schillebeeckx’s excellent Marriage: Human Reality and Saving Mystery (London: Sheed and Ward, 1976). The Church’s involvement in conducting weddings is a comparatively late development, and its role in legally defining the terms of marriage even later.

However, it would be equally true to say that the State doesn’t own marriage either — not if we think of ‘ownership’ in terms of it being the subject of a mass of laws and specialist lawyers, anyway. If Lynn Cohick, author of Women in the World of the Earliest Christians (Grand Rapids Mich.: Baker Academic, 2009) is to be trusted (and I can think of no reason why she shouldn’t be), few couples in the Roman world of the New Testament were actually married in a manner that depended on a formal and recognized legal process.

Similarly, in our own culture we have the myth of the ‘common law marriage’. Now of course such an entity has no legal status — that is to say, the courts will not admit or enforce any rights or claims on the basis of common law marriage. But the myth grew up no doubt in part because in the public mind there could be a recognition that a thing exists de facto even when it does not have any status de jure. Indeed in Australia (where things may also be different legally) a ‘partner’ in such a relationship is known colloquially as one’s ‘de facto’.

What this proves is that, rather like when traffic lights break down, the general public is actually capable of working out who goes with whom and on what basis, and of recognizing ‘marital-type relationships’ even where the law has no remit. Not least, we have seen this in the loose using of the term ‘marriage’ for the contracting of civil partnerships when they were first introduced.

Furthermore, the oft-quoted Marriage Act of 1753 was not about defining or controlling marriage per se but, as the full title says, “for the Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriage”. It is emphatically not the case, as sometimes seems to be implied, that marriage as we know it was somehow ‘invented’ at that point. Rather, the regulations regarding the conducting of weddings were tightened up, basically to prevent escalating property disputes arising out of rights conferred by the law itself on those who were actually married. (The irony is that the precipitating legal case took place in Scotland, but the Act did not apply there.)

Notice, however, it was the law’s involvement in matters of property which precipitated the law’s further interest in marriage. The problem (namely of unrecognized claimants on an inheritance) could presumably have been resolved by doing away with the inheritance right, which given that the government feels entitled to take part of that inheritance to itself anyway, by means of laws in its own favour, is not beyond imagining.

My thoughts on this were further prompted this morning by reading a comment by an Americanjournalist Patrick Pexton on the opposition of ‘religionists’ to same-sex marriage. “ We want to write words, read books, watch movies, listen to music, and have sex and babies,” he wrote, “pretty much when, where and how we choose.”

Now there might be those who want to argue that the freedom to have sex or a baby is not quite the same as the freedom to put on a CD or, indeed, to blog. Nevertheless, his plea has a certain merit. Why should the law regulate with whom I have sex (provided I’m not hurting anyone else and blah, blah, blah) any more than it regulates the music to which I listen?

And that being the case, why should the law regulate with whom I set up home? Specifically, why should the law regulate whether this domestic arrangement is something I want to call ‘marriage’ or something I’d rather keep to ‘shacking up’? The answer, it would seem from the civil partnerships legislation in this country, comes down to a few things like property, pensions and whether my partner can be treated as a ‘relative’ of mine in extremis. In other words, in practical terms it comes down to other areas where the law interferes. (Hence, if I have a baby, for example, the law insists I provide for it — something which society may feel is a better alternative than burdening the tax-payer, but which otherwise would depend on my exercising my freedom.)

Rather than extending the legal definition of marriage, then, why not tell the State and the lawyers it ought to be none of their business whom I marry, and demand that they sort out the law so as to increase, rather than further constrain, my liberty?

All this may seem terribly radical, but as has been observed in this debate, it used to work quite well until the lawyers got involved on matters affected by, but not central to, that which we call ‘marriage’. Deal with issues of property and pensions separately — for example through similar regulations to those governing civil partnerships — and let the people decide whom they wish to marry, and surely one achieves one of the chief goals of democracy, which, let us not forget, has been defined as ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’.

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Some Notes on Modern Marriage and the Church's Role

I have been asked to lead a session during our Episcopal Area Study Day on 'evangelism and marriage'. The theme of the day is 'Evangelism Without Tears' and very encouragingly over 250 people have signed up for it. Below are my notes.

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Making Marriage Matter

1.         Introduction

Consider the following statement about marriage, put forward in an official Anglican report on evangelism:

Marriage presents the parish priest with, perhaps, the greatest evangelistic opportunity of all. [...] We would emphasize that no preparation for marriage is adequate which does not appeal for decision for Christ, as the only sound foundation for married life. [Note 1]

But things are different now. According to the same report, the opportunity is so great because:

As at no other time in their lives, those who are about to embark on the adventure of uniting their personalities “as joint heirs of the grace of life,” and of setting up a home for themselves, are moved to listen to the claims of Christ and to yield their hearts to His obedience.

We must think about what is different now from 1945, particularly as suggested by the assumptions in the above sentence.

2.         Modern Marriage and the Church’s Role

In 2006, the Church of England commissioned some official research on modern marriage from market researchers Henley Centre and HeadlightVision. This looked into why couples choose to marry in church and put forward some suggestions as to how the Church of England might respond as one amongst several ‘players’ in the marriage ‘marketplace’. [Note 2]

The authors observed:

            1.         We believe that there is ‘space’ within contemporary society for the Church to talk positively about marriage

            2.         There is a need for clear, coherent and unapologetic communication about what the Church does in fact stand for in relation to marriage

            3.         There is a need for the Church to make explicit the implicit understandings within the Church about who is entitled to a church wedding, and to actively reassure couples that the Church is happy to marry them

            4.         Couples have different expectations of a church wedding experience, and it is important that clergy are aware of these and communications tailored accordingly where possible

            5.         The personal dimension of a church wedding is a huge potential draw which the Church should emphasise

            6.         Couples preparing for marriage and planning a wedding have many anxieties that the Church could look to at least partially alleviate (Kasriel, 3-4)

3.         Marriage — What’s the Difference?

In 1945, getting married involved undertaking several major transitions at once: leaving home, setting up in your own place, moving in with someone, having a legitimate sex-life within which to have legitimate children, etc.

For some decades this has not been the case. In 1960, according to figures from the US Census Bureau published in 2002, over 60% of men had completed five key milestones (completing school, leaving home, becoming financially dependent, marrying and having a child) by the time they were thirty. In 2000, that figure had dropped to about 27%.

People do not get married now for the reasons they got married in 1945. The shift in sexual behaviours in particular is highly significant. TTCE deplored the fact that,

The “double standard of morality” for men and women ... no longer obtains. Instead, owing to the immunity which contraceptives and prophylactives [sic] promise, the “man’s standard” is increasingly being adopted by both sexes. (TTCE, para 7)

            Kasriel and Goodacre note, 

In 1990 the mean number of sexual partners in a lifetime was 3.7 for women and 8.6 for men, whereas in 2000 the figure had risen to 6.5 for women and 12.7 for men. (11, quoted from ‘The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles’, 2000)

Interestingly an awareness that they might be judged as ‘living in sin’ is one factor in people deciding against a church wedding (Kasriel, 35).

4.         Why Marry?

Kasriel and Goodacre identify the primary motivation for marriage as ‘usually a couple’s desire to feel more committed to one another by making a public, lifelong commitment.’ (16)

This is, incidentally, important in helping us understand the current debate on ‘same-sex marriage’. In modern terms marriage is all about a public expression of love and commitment.

We need to see, therefore, that the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of marriage is not a matter of a radical change in lifestyle but of a declaration, thus making the wedding the key event. Kasriel and Goodacre note ‘a growing disconnect between the marriage ceremony and the marriage itself” (23).

Significantly, according to Kasriel and Goodacre ‘getting married’ is seen as a more significant social marker of commitment than starting a family, which actually comes third after moving in together!

The normal pattern of a modern relationship is thus:

Meet ➔ ‘Go Out’ ➔ Have Sex ➔ Move In ➔‘Commitment’ ➔ maybe Engagement ➔ eventually Marriage

5.         Where Does the Church Fit in?

Yet a remarkable percentage of couples want to get married in Church: 53% of the population think church weddings feel ‘more proper’ (Kasriel, p29) and in couples planning a church wedding, 56% state that their own or their partner’s religion was an important factor.

In other words, it is not just about the venue, although it would be naive to suggest the venue makes no difference.

Couples fear the interview with the ‘vicar’, which may be perceived as a ‘grilling’, but can be pleasantly surprised. A good relationship with the vicar can ‘make the day’, but it has to be genuine and personal. Modern and not too stiff, ‘approachable but not too matey’, are perceived as good (Kasriel 32).

Marriage preparation is also appreciated: ‘36% of those getting married in church say the sessions offered by the church were an important part of their decision’ (Kasriel 31), though the prospect of this can also be off-putting. Much depends, once again, on the relationship with the minister.

According to Kasriel and Goodacre, men particularly were found to appreciate preparation sessions, not least as a ‘check’ that they are doing the right thing:

Rather than simply being commitment-phobes as the stereotype would have us believe, men are often more likely than women to think about the meaning and the significance of the marriage commitment, and are less willing to rush to this stage. (Kasriel, 16)

Marriage preparation thus offers an opportunity for the Church to be involved in a way that many couples appreciate. (In our benefice we have been using the ‘Prepare Enrich’ programme [Note 3] for which I am also about to take the training course.)

6.         Marriage and Evangelism

But what of the earlier statement, ‘We would emphasize that no preparation for marriage is adequate which does not appeal for decision for Christ’? Is this also possible?

Kasriel and Goodacre offer a number of observations in their Recommendations:

It is absolutely reasonable for the Church to have a strong view on marriage, and to firmly hold to its values; people are in fact counting on the Church to do so. [...]

... it is vital that the institution recognises the importance of clear, coherent and unapologetic communication about what the Church does in fact stand for. It is absolutely vital for many couples that the Church continues to take marriage as seriously as it does, and to continue to emphasise that the wedding is primarily about the marriage commitment. [...] (Kasriel, 40)

Finally, the challenging nature of contemporary meanings of marriage and weddings mean that couples preparing for marriage and planning a wedding have many anxieties that the Church could at least partially alleviate. For example, the Church could help couples to understand and overcome the tension between individualism vs a desire for security within their relationship ...

And,

... it could provide particular support for men helping them to overcome fears about the seriousness of the decision ... (Kasriel, 41)

But what is the gospel for couples getting married?

Marriage is ‘an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church’ (Book of Common Prayer). The trouble is, we expect this to be accomplished by two sinners living together in close proximity.

The problem is particularly acute where the Church is approached by those who have been divorced and now wish to remarry. Jesus’ words (eg Matt 19:1-12) must be taken with full seriousness, indeed they underlie the Church’s unique, and apparently valued, view of marriage. But we are in a different situation to 1945, when TTCE could deplore the fact that,

In the past 30 years the number of divorces has risen from upwards of 500 a year to approximately 12,250 in 1944. (para 7) [Note 4]

According to the Office of National Statistics, there were 119,589 divorces in England and Wales in 2010. [Note 5] Indeed, these divorce statistics themselves suggest just how much marriage is in need of the gospel:

22 per cent of marriages in 1970 had ended in divorce by the 15th wedding anniversary, whereas 33 per cent of marriages in 1995 had ended after the same period of time. [Note 6]

Despite, therefore, the widespread acceptance of cohabitation before marriage and the general agreement, even amongst the younger generation, that marriage is an expression of commitment, divorce is widespread, and although people are marrying older, they are also divorcing older.

Contra what was said in 1945, it may well be that marriage is no longer the best time at which to engage people with the challenges, demands and promises of the gospel. But we must nevertheless ask with absolute seriousness what the gospel is for marriage and how we may convey it, not just at the point of the wedding, but before and after.

Endnotes

1. Towards the Conversion of England (The Press and Publications Board of the Church Assembly, 1945) para 97.

2. Tamar Kasriel and Rachel Goodacre, Understanding Marriage, Weddings and Church Weddings: An Exploration of the Modern Day Wedding Market Among Couples (Henley Centre HeadlightVision, 2007) http://www.churchofengland.org/media/45657/weddingresearch.pdf

3. http://www.prepare-enrich.co.uk/

4. The actual figure for England and Wales was 12,312. It peaked at 60,254 in 1947 but thereafter dropped back to 30,870 by 1950, not rising greatly again until 1965. The 1947 figure was only surpassed in 1971. (Source: The Office of National Statistics, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?edition=tcm%3A77-238035)

5. http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/divorces-in-england-and-wales/2010/stb-divorces-2010.html

6. http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/divorces-in-england-and-wales/2010/stb-divorces-2010.html

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What marriage is, and why it matters

(For those who can't remember that far back, this is the continuation of a train of thought started here: God, Marriage and Gender: Why We Are Where We Are.)

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Why do Christians care about marriage, and what does it mean to them?

The answer is quite simple, though it demands a considerable amount of unpacking: just as, according to Genesis 1:27, human beings ‘image’ God, so marriage ‘images’ the relationship between Christ and the Church, or to put it another way, the relationship between the Creator-Redeemer God and his created-redeemed people.

The image of God

The idea of the image of God (the imago dei) found in Genesis has been frequently discussed and attributed to various aspects of human nature or human society. Some have related it to the rational facilities of the human mind, others to the soul. Others, including the German theologian Karl Barth, looked to the human capacity for relationship with others, sometimes comparing the divine relationships in the Trinity with human society, families or even marriage itself.

But the biblical concept is arguably less complex and more ‘concrete’ than these suggestions allow.

The words used in Genesis 1:26, where God says, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness”, apply elsewhere in scripture to physical representations. ‘Images’, for example, are what the Israelites are to destroy when they come across examples of Canaanite worship. Moses says to them,

... then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you and destroy all their figured stones and destroy all their metal images and demolish all their high places. (Num 33:52, ESV)

Similarly, a ‘likeness’ is something visible to the eye. Thus Solomon’s temple included a bronze ‘sea’,

And under it was the likeness of oxen, which did compass it round about, for ten cubits, compassing the sea round about. (2 Chr 4:3, 1901 ASV)

When we ask what is the ‘image and likeness’ of God in human beings, therefore, the answer the Bible gives is not this part or that ability but the whole person, for the ultimate ‘image of God’ is one particular human being:

He [Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. (Col 1:15, NIV)

And it is not some ‘bit’ of Jesus or some particular thing he said or did that is this ‘image’, but the physical person of Jesus himself. Thus the language of 1 John, referring to the Apostle’s experience of Jesus, is clearly echoing Genesis 1 when it says,

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched — this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. (1 Jn 1:1, NIV)

The lessons of incarnation

The extraordinary truth of the ‘incarnation’ God is that imaged by human beings in material form — in this world, the stuff of weak flesh and blood.

This is not, of course, to say that God is flesh and blood, or that God has hands and feet (though the Bible uses such ‘anthropomorphic’ language about God). But then if we show someone a photographic image of a child and say “That’s my son,” no one makes the mistake of thinking our offspring is made of paper.

The difference when it comes to Christ is that when we say, “He is the image of the invisible God,” we include that person who is Christ in the ‘image’. It is not just an inanimate thing. (So, for example, for the time during which Christ’s body lay in the tomb, it would be difficult to point to it and say, “That is Christ,” for in a very obvious sense it is not — at least, not in the way it was.)

Thus the person of Christ ‘in the flesh’ images the ‘person’ of God himself — an idea that theologians wrestled with for centuries before they finally formulated the Creeds. But the crucial thing for our purposes is that this ‘imaging’ of God is possible and actual. In encountering Christ the disciples had an encounter with God:

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? (John 14:8-10a, NIV)

The relationship of marriage

What is true of the person of Christ, however, is also true of the relationship of marriage when it comes to God’s relating to his people. The words of Ephesians 5 are much disputed today, but they draw on ideas which are found throughout the Scriptures and Apostolic teaching:

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, [NIV, ‘submit’] to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour. ... Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:21-23, 25, NIV)

It does not matter much that the word ‘submit’ is assumed from v 21, rather than stated (as in the NIV and many other English versions). Nor does it really matter a great deal that v 21 demands a ‘mutual submission’ (as is often observed).

What matters is that husband and wife embody between them the roles of Christ and the one hand and the Church on the other, and the relationship between them of mutual love, submission and sacrifice.

The ‘scandal’ for many is that those relationships are not interchangeable. Most people are happy that ‘love, submission and sacrifice’ be found in the marriage relationship. Many object to these being, as it were, parcelled out amongst the participants.

Marriage as ‘image’

But that brings us back to the challenge of an ‘image’. Martin Luther’s doctrine of the ‘real presence’ of Christ in the eucharist was based on the understanding that since Christ is God, and God is present everywhere in his universe, he can be just as present in bread and wine as anything else.

That being the case, however, God can be present in a banana. Luther’s objection would only be that there were no bananas at the Last Supper. But if he can be present in a banana, could he not be imaged as a banana? At this Luther surely would have objected.

The point is that the image of God is mankind generally and Christ particularly, not bananas, or fish, or lions. That is his doing, and we cannot choose to change this.

So when the Apostle writes that “the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church”, he is spelling out unchangeable realities, not offering an illustration for our consideration (and perhaps our subsequent moderation or rejection).

But in doing this, he is picking up on, and standing within, a tradition that goes right back through the Old Testament — that God is the ‘husband’ of Israel and Israel is to him as a ‘bride’.

The Old Testament tradition

That tradition is expressed most dramatically, perhaps, in the book of the 8^th century BC prophet, Hosea. At the beginning of the book, God tells Hosea,

“Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD.” (Hos 1:2b, NIV)

The relationship between the prophet and his wife, “Gomer daughter of Diblaim”, thus becomes an ‘acted parable’ of God’s relationship with his people. But as Raymond Ortlund demonstrates in a book once unfortunately titled Whoredom, but now re-branded as God’s Unfaithful Wife: A Biblical Theology of Spiritual Adultery, what is experienced by Hosea has been true of God and Israel since the days of the Exodus.

From the outset, Israel’s spiritual unfaithfulness has been spoken of in sexual-relational terms:

Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. (Ex 34:15, NIV)

But despite this, and despite the fact that the legal penalty for such unfaithfulness was death, we find God in Hosea acting not as the vengeful ‘cuckold’, but as a suitor, seeking to win back the wife he has lost to another:

... I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. “In that day,” declares the LORD, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’ [Heb: ‘my Baal’ — the name of a foreign god)” (Hos 2:15-16, NIV)

As we have said, this tradition continues throughout the Old Testament. In the early chapters of Jeremiah, for example, God calls out to his people in language reminiscent of Hosea:

“Return, faithless people,” declares the LORD, “for I am your husband. I will choose you — one from a town and two from a clan — and bring you to Zion.” (Jer 3:14, NIV)

And later on in the book, the New Covenant is framed in marital terms:

“The time is coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. (Jer 31:31-32, NIV)

Significantly, this restored relationship also includes a restored purity:

I will build you up again and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel. Again you will take up your tambourines and go out to dance with the joyful. (Jer 31:4, NIV)

The word used here for ‘virgin’ is betulah, which in this context has the meaning of ‘a mature young woman that has never had sexual intercourse’ (J Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains).

A similar hope is found in the later chapters of Isaiah:

No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah [fn. “My Delight is in Her”], and your land Beulah [fn. “Married”]; for the LORD will take delight in you, and your land will be married. As a young man marries a maiden [betulah] , so will your sons marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you. (Isa 62:4-5, NIV)

The New Testament fulfilment

All this is connected with God’s redemption and salvation of Israel. And so when Christ is recognized as Saviour, it is no great step to identify him also as the husband of those he redeems. Indeed in the book of Revelation, the ushering in of the kingdom of God is presented as the arrival of a Bride:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. (Rev 21:1-2, NIV)

Salvation is therefore a ‘preparation’ for this appearance. In chap ter 7 we read,

Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes — who are they, and where did they come from?

I answered, “Sir, you know.”

And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” (Rev 7:13-14, NIV)

And then in chapter 19 we read,

Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting: “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.” (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.) (Rev 19:6-8, NIV)

Arguments about the relationship between our own deeds and our final salvation need not delay us here. Whatever our view of the ‘righteous acts’ of God’s people (the Greek is dikaiōmata, which the King James Version translates as ‘righteousness’), the Bride’s dress is given to her and the ‘whiteness’ of the robes of the saints in Revelation is due to the death — the “blood” — of the Lamb, Jesus Christ. And this is reflected in paul’s language in Ephesians:

... Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. (Ephesians 5:25-27, NIV)

Indeed, the consistency between the author of Ephesians and the author of Revelation is remarkable at this point, indicating as it does a shared view of Christ’s nature as ‘husband’ and the Church’s nature as ‘Bride’.

A further indication of this is the similarity between the expectation at the end of Revelation, and the call at the end of 1 Corinthians. At the end of 1 Corinthians 16, we see an invocation which is clearly as old as the origins of the Church itself, for it is written in Aramaic, not Greek like the rest of the letter:

If anyone does not love the Lord — a curse be on him. Marana tha! [NIV: “Come, O Lord!” (1 Cor 16:22)

Similar words, this time in Greek, are found at the end of Revelation. Here, however, they are uttered by “the Spirit and the Bride”:

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” (Rev 22:17, NIV)

Putting these things together, along with other material such as the parable of the wedding feast (Matt 22:1-14) or John the Baptist’s description of himself as the ‘friend of the bridegroom’ who is Jesus (Jn 3:28-30), it is not unreasonable to conclude that the Church’s expectation of Christ’s return was the expectation of the heavenly Bridegroom’s arrival. This would be the true consummation of the divine marriage, so long foreshadowed in the earlier Scriptures.

Thus the Apostle Paul saw himself as a ‘marriage broker’:

I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. (2 Cor 11:2, NIV)

Of course, the ‘marriage’ to which we are looking forward must not be seen as a replication of our human marriages. Indeed (bearing in mind he was talking to Sadducees, who didn’t believe in angels or the resurrection, and which may therefore mean some theological leg-pulling is involved), Jesus explicitly dismissed the idea that marital relationships established here carry on into the kingdom:

At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. (Matt 22:30, NIV)

Nevertheless, the Scriptural tradition is consistent: the creator God is the redeemer husband, Israel under the Old Covenant and the Church under the New is the bride.

Persons and equality

And it is this which is ‘imaged’, or modelled, by the relationship between husband and wife in marriage. Saying this, however, a number of points need to be made clear.

The first, and perhaps the most important in avoiding misunderstandings, is that no ‘denigration’ of women is entailed.

In Ephesians 5 and 6, Paul refers to three paired relationships where the persons involved are not simply interchangeable — husbands and wives, children and parents and slaves and masters. Clearly these are in some sense applications of his general principle announced in 5:21: “Submit to one another ...”. Equally clearly, we cannot simply swap children and parents around, nor slaves and masters, and say that the same ‘submission’ applies to all.

Thus although the word ‘submit’ is implicit rather than explicit in v 22: “Wives, to your own husbands as to the Lord,” as the subsequent verses make clear, this is true of the wife to her husband, but not the other way round, for he is ‘head’ to her, as Christ is to the Church, and she is ‘body’ to him as the Church is to Christ.

However, that does not make her a lesser person, any more than a slave obeying a master, or a child obeying their parents makes slaves or children lessen human beings. We are all slaves when it comes to Christ, as 6:9 makes clear, and Christ himself is the Son of his Father.

Whatever we may be told to the contrary, a relationship which is not reversible need not imply persons who are unequal, as Jesus’ example of foot-washing is surely meant to show:

“You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.” (Jn 13:12-15, NIV)

Furthermore, in that particular instance, Jesus rebuked Peter’s attempt to ‘restore’ the proper order of the relationship, by refusing to let Jesus wash his feet (13:6). The whole point of what Jesus was doing was its radical inequality. Peter could not refuse the offer, and he could not return the favour. Rather, he was to follow the example:

“I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” (Jn 13:14, NIV)

A Christianity which insists that there must be no inequalities, no making ourselves less than others — in short, no submission — is no Christianity at all.

Our problem is when, either for our own sake or, as we imagine, for the sake of others, we insist that this cannot be true of wives for husbands unless it is also true of husbands for wives. But then we have to ask whether this is not intrinsic to what it means to be a husband or a wife.

If a parent were to say to a child, “Today, I will obey you,” we would question whether the parent-child relationship truly existed. Of course, if the child were an army officer who outranked the parent, that might become the case, because the new relationship would cut across the old. This is possible (and has indeed happened) because a person is not just a child, any more than a woman is ‘just’ a wife. But in the relationship of parent and child, or husband and wife, certain things are inherent.

Marriage and ‘headship’

Again, there is no universal ‘headship’ of men with regard to women, just as there is no universal demand for men to lay down their lives in sacrifice for all women, for men and women, taken as individuals, are just that. Both are human beings and we may rightly consider them as equal.

It is only when they opt into marriage and only in relation to one another, that this changes. Wives are told to submit “to your own [Gk: tois idious] husbands.” Another man who insisted on such submission to himself would be an interloper. But the apostolic teaching makes clear that in this relationship of marriage, this is how it works, because the relationship is not a merely human social arrangement, but a pattern of the divine life.

Marriage and culture

And brings us to a further point. In Scripture, there are number of socio-sexual relationships which are recognized and sanctioned at various times. We have polygamy, concubinage, ‘levirate’ marriage (where a brother inseminates his own deceased brother’s widow), and so on. There is no single pattern laid down early on for everyone to follow. Rather, what we see is an emerging understanding.

What we have to ask, however, is whether this is merely a further sociological development, which may then be open to other possibilities, or rather a gradual discovery of the truth, just as the nature of the godhead is discovered through the incarnation of Jesus.

If marriage is a merely sociological phenomenon, able to include some of the features of early Israelite culture, why not broaden it once again to include cultural features of the late West?

Marriage in the Christian tradition

The Christian tradition, however, reads things differently, seeing marriage as something which is finally understood only through the words of Jesus. And his own teaching implies that this involves a rediscovery of an original principle which has been lost and obscured. Thus, asked whether divorce was possible “for any reason”, he answered by returning to Genesis:

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” (Matt 19:4-6, NIV)

Thus divorce, which was allowed to Israel “because your hearts were hard” (19:8, ie because of unbelief), is finally understood to be a contradiction to the true nature of marriage. In fact, divorce must be ranked alongside polygamy and concubinage, as things which once may have been permitted, but which are not ways of life to be followed by those who seek to obey God.

In the same way, we must understand the relationship of husband and wife, in sacrifice and submission, as something which is only revealed and understood as the gospel is revealed and understood. Like Jesus’ teaching on divorce,

“Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given.” (Matt 19:11b, NIV)

But as with the teaching on divorce, once we have heard it we can only choose to obey it or to disobey. We can no longer plead ignorance.

Marriage and revelation

It is the revelation of Christ which establishes that the marriage relationship is not merely ‘faithful and stable’ but permanent. Thus Paul writes to the Corinthian church,

To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife. (1 Cor 7:10-11, NIV)

So difficult is this to accept that Paul must appeal explicitly to its origins in Jesus’ own words. And so important is this appeal that Paul must carefully distinguish what he says next as not being Jesus’ own words:

To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord) ... (1 Cor 7:12, NIV)

Unless Jesus had said it, we would not believe it, just as the disciples found it hard when they themselves heard what Jesus said (Matt 19:10). Yet however hard they found it, the message clearly stuck, as evidenced by Paul’s knowledge of this teaching as coming from ‘not I, but the Lord’.

The challenge of marriage

Now it is clear that, left to our own devices, we would not design marriage to operate this way. In fact the Church itself has increasingly reneged on Jesus’ teaching. But that does not prove we are right or that Jesus was wrong. (Least of all does it prove he was just a man of his own culture, for many in that culture did indeed allow divorce ‘for any reason’.)

On the contrary, Jesus’ words highlight the fact that marriage is something to which our lives should be conformed, not something that should be conformed to our lives. It is an objective thing, defined by principles beyond ourselves and our desires. In fact, according to the Christian understanding, it is a bringing into the present world of the fundamental realities of creation and salvation.

And in this, sexuality and gender have a particular part to play and lessons to teach. But this is something to which we must return later.

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