The latest issue of Christian Reflection published by Baylor University (and available on the web at their site www.ChristianEthics.ws )is concerned with marriage. In the introduction the editor, Robert B. Kruscwitz sets the tone by asking "How should Christians respond as marriage becomes deinstitutionalized in our culture...?" Good question and one that is as relevant as the most recent statistics on divorce, single parent families, abandoned children and, ... (have I forgotten something?, ... oh yes) homosexual pairings.
David Gushee authors the lead article and argues that Christians should respond to the declining situation regarding marriage by reclaiming the idea of covenant, with its obligations and promises, as our basic strategy for resisting the cultural decline. I agree with his overall statement but consider his arguments supporting the position as being sadly deficient.
Gushee's emphasis throughout his article is completely focused on the horizontal relationship of the marriage covenant and with the ethical structure it provides for the human participants. After offering some general observations about the nature of covenants, by pointing us to the Noahic covenant which he calls (erroneously, to my mind) the "first covenant in scripture", he focuses on the utilitarian benefits from the covenantal structure.
Gushee's fundamental analysis is that we sinners are prone to wander (Lord, I know it, prone to leave the God I love). However if we Christians will only regain a covenantal emphasis in our marriage relations, we will understand our marriages in terms of "binding promises" that are directly contrary to our sinful impulses. We will be more inclined to remain faithful because the "Covenant... takes faithless people and coerces them to keep faith." (emphasis mine) Consistent with his wholly horizontal approach, Gushee sees the covenant relationship as being God's provision for humans to pursue their "creational needs.... companionship, sexual intimacy, love, and family partnership." Throughout, Gushee's approach is entirely horizontal, utilitarian and pragmatic. For that reason his approach, though absolutely correct in his fundamental premise, falls woefully short of providing a basis by which Christians can hope to reverse the trend of our own marriage statistics or ever hope to provide a corrective to the general societal trend. Certainly, if any perusal of Biblical history or history in general should make obvious, man does not remain faithful because some covenant stipulation explicitly requires him to be so. If such were the case the Law would have been entirely sufficient for us all.
What is needed to support Gushee's call for a return to covenantal thinking about marriage, is to transcend the purely horizontal utilitarian realm and realize that throughout scripture, God's purposes in establishing covenants, is that they are to be revelatory! The covenants God has ordained, and marriage is certainly one of them, are all intended to embody, make known and convey higher truths than the mere utility which springs as additional fruit from them.
How is man to understand that he was never created as an independent being, but with a fundamental interdependency, unless he affirms that in the basic man/woman helpmate revelation that is recorded in Gen. 2? Marriage, as covenant, points away from mere utilitarian personal need and comfort type of thinking, and reaffirms that the transcendent truth that man, as a noble creature, was designed to function as God's regent on earth, to fulfill the Creation mandate, and that he is essentially unable to function in this capacity alone. He is not "complete" until he is in a "help-mate" relation that empowers and equips him to so function. A lot more could be said on this but it would take a whole essay on its own.
At the very least, marriage as covenant must embody and proclaim the idea that man is created unto a purpose - to serve God - and that this wonderful privilege requires the most intimate sharing and union with another helper ideally suited for the task. Thus, the marriage covenant is to function in a revelatory manner about God's creation purposes.
But, even more clearly, the marriage covenant was established to be revelatory of God's transcendent purposes in redemption. I wonder how in the world Gushee could pass over the implications of Eph. 5:31-32 in his focus on the horizontal demands of covenant stipulations. When Paul refers the entire marriage relation to the transcendent relation between Christ and His Church, he makes known God's intentions for our marriages to always be pointing away from ourselves toward the Perfect Husband who is sanctifying and purifying His Bride and who will one day welcome Her to His marriage feast. If we do not undertake, as husbands and wives, to see ourselves as representational of and illustrative of, Christ and His Church, we will be left with no other purposes in our marriage than the human comforts and rewards that it may or may not be providing. But if I am called to a higher calling than my own wants, my own desires, my own inclinations then my expectations of my spouse are seen entirely differently. They are seen through the lens of service - as covenant head or as covenant helper - with an eye toward that other person's eternal felicity and joy. I am to love as Christ loved.... redemptively, sacrificially, expectantly. I am to love with a love that cannot be denied, cannot be ignored, cannot be avoided, with full confidence that the power of the Holy Spirit, working in and through the evidences of that love, will bring fruit in God's time and consistent with His purposes.
Such an attitude can only spring from a transcendent perspective on marriage, but it gives the Christian marriage a recognizeably different tone than the secular marriage. It establishes a witness which has a powerful appeal to a culture that rapidly tires when sated with its own pleasures. Here the transcendent perspective empowers and provides for all the horizontal fruits that Gushee seeks to gain, but it does so in the form of blessings on obedience, the granting of our heart's desires, by the God who is the Third Party in every marriage covenant. That puts the cart in right relation to the horse and it makes all the difference in this world, and the next.
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