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“Three Big Words for Marriage”
By Paul
Miller
Re-Defining Marriage
A decision by the Ontario Divisional
Court in 2002 appears to have overturned a centuries-old understanding of
marriage. The court declared that Canada’s marriage laws, by defining marriage
as the union of a man and a woman, violate the Charter of Rights. The court’s
ruling and Bill C-38 which will enshrine same-sex marriage in law mirrors a
profound shift in sexual mores that has been going on in Canadian society for
years. Canada is emerging as perhaps the world’s first truly postmodern nation.[i]
Furthermore, organizations like the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and the
Roman Catholic Church have failed to reverse the trend. Same sex marriage has
been defined as a Charter right and that is effectively a conversation stopper.
The media and political and social elites see the justice of same-sex marriage
as beyond rational dissent.
An Appropriate Response
This calls for great wisdom. The new
law is not merely one act of parliament but the result of a massive social
readjustment. The question now is: How can those who regard traditional marriage
as the will of God and the foundation of a humane society best use their
energies?
We need to rearticulate the
foundations, benefits and promises of marriage as it is understood in Scripture
and Christian tradition. Postmodernity may in fact be a blessing in disguise
because if it is really true that there is no absolutely privileged discourse
then traditional Christians have every bit as much right to be heard as anyone.
There is an opportunity for more traditional Christians to proclaim anew that
the sexual, emotional, social and procreative union of one man and one woman in
a lifelong covenant of faithfulness constitutes a unique and God-ordained
ordering of human relationships beneficial to individuals and society. We need
to recognize the empirical fact of pluralism without acquiescing in it. We need
to allow marriage to stand on its own merits and present our culture with a
truly counter-cultural alternative.
It hurts to admit it but churches
simply must accept their growing marginalization in Canadian society. But as
minority status envigorated the early church, so it may inject new energy into a
Canadian Church that has lost its way. The apparent irrelevance of the churches
does not mean their message is irrelevant. Churches have fallen into the trap of
thinking that if they can just mimic the surrounding culture, that culture will
return to the church. Just the reverse has happened. The more the church tries
to appeal to its cultured despisers, the less motivation people have to get out
of bed on Sunday morning. Christians need to reconcile themselves to living in a
radically pluralistic context, but recommit themselves to declaring the Gospel
of Jesus Christ to that context.
A Doctrinal Foundation for Marriage
Our understanding of marriage needs to
be established on a foundation of Christian doctrine. By doctrine I do not mean
just credal formulas but the ongoing process of critical and prayerful
reflection on the ways of the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ. The insights
of modern psychology and theories of human development will be incorporated into
our understanding. But these insights will be interpreted in the light of the
foundational reality of the Gospel.
Stanley Grenz is one theologian who
has viewed human sexuality and marriage through the lens of the doctrine of the
Trinity. Grenz constructs his theology around the unifying concept of community.[ii]
True human community imitates the dynamic communion of love between the three
persons of the Godhead. Trinitarian communion is the foundation of all godly
relationships, according to Grenz, but especially of male-female relationships.
Because humans are created in the image of God as sexually differentiated, male
and female, Christian marriage has the potential to imitates in a unique way the
mutuality and other-centredness of the Triune God.
What Grenz has done with the Trinity
can be extended to other doctrines as well. My title is “Three Big Words for
Marriage.” Those three big words are incarnational, sacramental
and eschatological. The Christian vision of marriage can be illuminated
by the doctrine of the Incarnation, by Christian eschatology and by sacramental
practice.
Marriage is Incarnational
First, marriage is incarnational. Some
may argue that this is theologically incorrect because the Incarnation is a
christological and not an anthropological doctrine. It refers specifically to
Jesus Christ but not to human beings in general. The doctrine of the Incarnation
describes in formal terms the “union of human nature with the divine in one
person”[iii].
That union occurred uniquely in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God.
Properly incarnational theology is a corrective to the modern anthropocentric
tendency to see Jesus as merely an extraordinary example of that which is true
of all of us, the perfection of the God-conscious human being, one who succeeded
in discovering “the God within” and who inspires us to do the same. Jesus is not
the epitome of homo religiosus but the Word of God made flesh. As P. T.
Forsyth has reminded us, Christ has the power to save not because he is like us
but because he is unlike us. We do not participate in incarnation directly and
immediately but only indirectly and through Christ.
The Incarnation affirms the Created
order
If marriage is incarnational, then, it
must be so in a derivative, analogical or metaphorical sense – and yet for all
that, I would argue in a very real sense. Two aspects of the doctrine of
the incarnation are relevant in making this case.
First, through the Incarnation, God
confirms the goodness of creation. The doctrine was formulated initially in
response to Gnosticism and Docetism which denigrated the material order, and
particularly the human body, as irredeemably corrupt. Theologians like Colin
Gunton have done a great service by rediscovering the insights of the Church
Fathers who battled against those heresies, most notably in the creation-centred
incarnational theology of Irenaeus of Lyons. The famous saying of Irenaeus that
“Jesus became like us that we might become like him” reflects the Eastern view
that Christ took on human flesh in order to restore the divine image in
humankind and to heal the breach between the creation and its Creator. The
rediscovery of Eastern Christology reminds us that Christ became human to
restore something good rather than simply to remove something bad.
This is crucial to a fully-orbed
understanding of Christian marriage because it takes very seriously our
embodiment as male and female. Human sexuality is bound to the inescapable
fact that human beings come in two types, male and female. This needs to be
boldly asserted in the face of a gender-bending postmodernity in which sexual
identity is not something given but something constructed according to the free
choice of the individual. The Lutheran ethicist and theologian Gilbert
Meilaender has pointed out how strangely disembodied contemporary attitudes to
sex have become. In a review of James Nelson’s famous book Embodiment,
(the Bible of liberal Christian sexual revisionism in the 1980s), Meilaender
notes the tension in our culture between an obsession with bodies on the one
hand but the primacy of inner feelings on the other.[iv]
Contemporary sexual ideology, Meilaender argues, in spite of its rhetoric of
embodiment, rejects the foundational duality of male and female and opts
for a dualism in which body and soul are effectively alienated from one
another. Meilaender notes that “only a dualistic age could … imagine that sexual
encounters between persons not committed to a permanent union are ‘casual’ since
a bodily commitment need not involve the persons.”[v]
Popular culture confirms this insight. In movies and soap operas, what does the
adulterous husband always say to the devastated wife when his affair is
discovered? “It didn’t mean anything to me. It was just physical. It doesn’t
affect how I feel about you” Separating physical union from personal commitment
is a profoundly dualistic idea which fails to honor our embodiment.
Much more realistic is the attitude of
St. Paul that a union of bodies brings about the entanglement of souls (1 Cor 6:
15-16) Promiscuity is wrong not because it violates a moral code but because it
is destructive of God-given personality. “Everything is permissible,” Paul says,
“but not everything is beneficial” (1 Cor 6;12.)
In his classic study Love in the
Western World, Denis de Rougement credits the Incarnation with permitting us
to avoid “the double peril of humanism and idealism.”[vi]
The Christian doctrine of the Incarnation maintains in careful balance the
imminent and transcendent aspects of life, relating them but not confusing them.
Incarnational marriage is neither the pursuit of a quasi-sacred (and ultimately
unattainable) romantic ideal; nor the mere coupling of bodies for convenience or
pleasure. It neither pretends that through sexuality we may attain the divine
nor contents itself with the merely human; but celebrates the God who took on
human flesh.
Such an analysis suggests that
normative sexuality means the physical union of male and female within the
context of a covenant commitment. Scripture, I think it can be argued, presents
marriage as that God-given form of human relationship in which the creative
potential of the male-female sexual differentiation is realized and in which
human sexual desire is ordered in a constructive rather than destructive
direction. This raises the question whether expressions of genital sexuality
that depart from the norm ought to be considered immoral or wrong. There will be
a wide spectrum of responses to this question among Christians. But it seems to
me that, given the very real social, spiritual, physical and psychological
benefits that accrue to individuals and the community from heterosexual
marriage, Christians can make a very good case for the traditional understanding
of marriage as God’s primary intention for the human race.
The Image of God
The issue of embodiment also relates
to the biblical concept of the image of God. The Bible is somewhat ambiguous
about the precise meaning of this term which has played such an important role
in Christian anthropology. However, the Book of Genesis makes it clear that our
maleness and femaleness cannot be separated from our creation in God’s image and
likeness. God’s intention is that man and woman live in harmonious mutuality
(Gen 2: 20-25.) The shattering of male-female relationships, the imbalance of
power that issues in patriarchy, misogyny, and the alienation of the sexes is a
consequence of the fall (Gen 3:16), not integral to creation.
Whatever else the term “image of God”
might mean, it is to be realized in communion with one who is different. Again,
Gilbert Meilaender: “The mutuality for which we are destined is a loving union
of those who are other.”[vii]
Now, it’s a modern cliché that each person is created unique and “there is
nobody else quite like me.” However, the foundational differentiation between
human beings is sexual. Distinctions of class, culture, creed and even race and
ethnicity can be transcended by an act of will; but try as we might, we cannot
cross the great divide and live as a member of the opposite sex. (We’ll bracket
the case of transgendered sexuality and other exotica for the moment.) As a man,
there are dimensions of human experience that are forever hidden from me. I
cannot, even by an act of imagination, really know what it is like to be a
woman, even though I share with women a bond of common humanity. I cannot know
what it is to menstruate, to bear a child, to experience sexual pleasure as a
woman does. Feminists have taught us that these embodied experiences shape
women’s whole emotional, psychological and social being. Nature and nurture,
biology and socialization are intertwined.[viii]
There are aspects of femaleness, then, that I can never bring within the horizon
of my experience. And, because the image of God encompasses both maleness and
femaleness, that means I can never lay claim to a complete understanding of
God’s image that is, apart from communion with members of the opposite sex. I
need women to give me a full appreciation of humanity.
Stanley Grenz has argued that God’s
encounter with humankind is for the purpose of creating community – community
that mirrors in an imperfect way the perfect communion of love within the
Trinity. True community brings together those who are unalike, who are separated
from one another by barriers of nature. For this reason, community must involve
struggle, the hard labor of recognizing the work of God in the one who is
not and cannot be like me. True community, by definition, breaks down barriers.
Community that includes only those who are like one another fails to plumb the
depths of the divine image. And so the community of male and female, of those
are so alike and yet so profoundly different from one another, becomes the basic
paradigm of all community.
We must avoid suggesting, however,
that those who are unmarried are somehow less than fully human, or that marriage
is the only legitimate form male-female relationships can take. Such a claim
would be absurd. Karl Barth says that “marriage should be understood in terms of
the male/female distinction” but that “the latter [is] the more fundamental
reality.”[ix]
However, it does suggest that marriage is a gift of God through which the
majority of persons can explore and express the mystery of the imago Dei
and, as such, marriage ought to have a unique place of honor in the
constellation of human relationships.
This also does not deny the
possibility of committed, loving, other-centred same sex relationships.
Christians need to acknowledge the empirical reality that there are gays and
lesbians who express real fidelity in their commitments to one another. However,
the broad theological vision of the Bible, suggests very strongly that, no
matter how these relationships might be ritualized or formalized and whatever
their virtues, they are not marriages. Civil society may define marriage
primarily in terms of human rights or individual commitment. Courts and
legislatures may mandate an equal status in the eyes of the law. But the
Christian vision of marriage is not grounded primarily in the aspirations and
emotional commitments of individuals but in that pattern of interrelatedness
appropriate to our creation as male and female.
Incarnation and Agape
The third aspect of the Incarnation
that informs our understanding of marriage, an aspect that is often obscured in
polemics surrounding the role of religious belief in power relations, is its
self-giving, self-emptying nature. According to the Christological hymn in
Philippians 2: 5-11, Jesus became human by setting aside the glory that was
rightly his as God’s equal, in an act of marvellous condescension motivated
purely out of obedience to the Father and love for the Father’s world.
Furthermore, the preamble to that hymn says that our attitude should be that of
Christ Jesus.;We should labor to mirror the same kind of self-giving that Jesus
embodied when he took human form.
Once again, this is hardly true only
of marriages. But a fully-orbed Christian understanding of marriage will stress
that we are called in all of our relationships, including our marriages, to
model the self-giving love of Christ. If husbands and wives could learn true
Christ-likeness, would we be talking about a crisis in marriage? Would opponents
of traditionally ordered sexual relationships be able to discredit marriage as
soul-destroying and life-denying? As we attempt to give a full account of the
glory of Christian marriage, and as the church seeks to guide and support
couples in their marriages, we need to hold up marriage as a vocation to
self-giving.
Marriage as Sacramental
The second big word for marriage is
sacramental. Again, we must begin with a qualification and clarification. Roman
Catholic and Orthodox tradition defines marriage as a sacrament, meaning that it
is indissoluble and that it is regulated by the Church. So far as I know,
Augustine was the first to refer to marriage as sacramentum, by which he
meant a permanent and indissoluble union. Along with procreativity and sexual
fidelity, Augustine counted permanence as one of the intrinsic goods of
marriage.[x]
Augustine’s schema was refined and codified by Aquinas and subsequent canon law.
It was a vision of marriage rooted in a Christian natural law, indebted to both
Aristotle and the Stoics. Marriage is a sacrament in the sense that it is an
action carried out by the church which effects the grace that it signifies. In
other words, the sacramental act ex opere operato (according to the thing
as it is performed) has the power to actually bring the believer into a saving
relationship with God because Christ is present and active in it.
The Protestant understanding of
sacraments is quite different. Protestantism emphasizes more their instrumental
quality as means of grace rather than the inherent efficacy of the act itself.[xi]
This suggests that marriage is not so much an end in itself as a means to an
end. Protestant doctrines of marriage have stressed the covenant promise between
the spouses committing themselves to imitate the covenant faithfulness of God.[xii]
Furthermore, sacramentality is closely
related to the Incarnation. It testifies to the willingness of God to use
created things as channels of grace. In a sense, all creation is “sacramental”
because God works through everyday things. As Romans 1.20 says, the invisible
qualities of God are clearly seen in the things that God has made. This echoes
the Jewish idea of the hallowing of the ordinary. The Jewish physician and
ethicist Leon Kass writes that “our ordinary experience of life in the world may
be the privileged road to the deepest truth.”[xiii]
This comes close to expressing the Protestant understanding of the sacraments.
The formal, liturgical sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are special
instances of a divine reality at the heart of creation: God uses created things
as channels of grace.
Marriage as a Sign
With the foregoing in mind, I want to
suggest two aspects of sacramentality that are particularly relevant to
marriage. First, sacraments are “signs”. Their value is not inherent but derives
from the greater reality to which they point. The fidelity between husband and
wife can be a sign, a testimony to, a proclamation of the covenant fidelity of
God. Again, Gilbert Meilaender, with characteristic perceptiveness, points out
that faithfulness to a life-long commitment is something that is profoundly
unnatural. Human beings do not naturally enter into or keep commitments “for
better or for worse,” particularly when that commitment implies sexual
exclusivity. To actualize such a commitment requires human beings (especially
males) not to embrace but to overcome that which comes naturally.[xiv]
Insofar as such fidelity is a human possibility, it will transcend natural
inclinations and desires, seeking fulfillment in a reality at once higher and
deeper than our own good intentions. It is possible to honor a commitment to a
life-long marriage only if that marriage is “touched by the eternal.”[xv]
Marriage, in a sense, is supernatural. When a man and a woman are enabled
by grace to live up to such a commitment, they become a sign of its possibility
in a world where everything is presumed to be transient, ephemeral, subject to
shifting emotions and circumstances. Marriage stands as a sign not only to other
marriages but to humanity at large of the possibility that we can live in agapic
love.[xvi]
Marriage is not sacramental because it is indissoluble, but because it can stand
as a uniquely ordered sign of God-like covenant fidelity.
The Fruitfulness of Marriage
A second sacramental quality of
marriage is fruitfulness. Again, Catholic tradition can enrich our
understanding. Fruitfulness, in Catholic moral teaching, involves the
cultivation of habits leading to virtues. This ethical orientation is rooted in
Aristotle’s dictum that the just person is the one who acts justly. Virtues are
acquired through practice. One of the primary virtues of marriage is
fruitfulness.
Fruitfulness goes far beyond
child-bearing. It is “a capacity to generate life and nurture it.”[xvii]
It includes, but is not restricted to, biological procreativity. Marriage has
the potential to issue in “new life.” Marriage is the paradigm of human relating
which results in something bigger than itself. Fruitfulness is closely related
to another virtue, generativity, which is “a willingness to use my power
responsibly to serve life that goes beyond myself.”[xviii]
We might say that through this or that particular marriage, good things may come
into being which were not there before and would otherwise not exist. This is
reflective of God’s power to make something out of nothing, to bring light from
darkness, community from alienation, life from death.
Generativity and fruitfulness are
oriented to the future, which is always a “movement of self-transcendence.”[xix]
One’s care and concern is devoted to that which is not yet, which goes beyond
one’s immediate desires. This understanding of marriage, it seems to me, is a
powerful challenge to the prevailing idea of both marriage and parenthood as a
means for achieving personal happiness and individual fulfillment.[xx]
Marriage as Eschatological
The third big word for marriage is
eschatological. This is counterintuitive. Eschatology is the doctrine of the
ultimate future and the last things. What could be more this-worldly and
present-oriented than marriage? Christian eschatology properly understood,
however, does not isolate the future from the present but integrates them
seamlessly. Eschatology concerns the divine telos of all creation -- that
creation will be renewed and God’s will will be done on earth as it is in
heaven. Eschatologies that are obsessed only with the future resurrection of
believers and the destruction of sinners have more in common with Gnostic and
Manichean dualism than with biblical faith. Unfortunately, Protestant theology
beginning at least with Schleiermacher tended to relegate eschatology to an
afterthought in the mistaken belief that it was only concerned with the future,
and therefore of no immediate relevance to Christian experience. One of the most
promising features of contemporary theology is the recovery of genuine
eschatology in the work of theologians like Jurgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg,
Robert Jenson and Ted Peters.
At its root, Christian eschatology
declares that God will complete what God has started. We hear often that
Christianity is an historical religion. Among the many meanings of that
statement is that God’s work will have an end as well as a beginning. And yet,
in a very real sense, what is happening in the present is permeated by what has
been guaranteed of the future. The Kingdom promised by the prophets, announced
and inaugurated by Jesus and lived by the church will be consummated in the last
days. Pauline and Deutero-Pauline theology is thoroughly infused with the idea
that God will bring all things to completion in Jesus Christ (Phil 1:6; Eph
1:10; Rom 8) ; that the love incarnated in Christ at a moment in history and
shed abroad in the hearts of believers by the Holy Spirit will be the sole
ruling principle of all creation. Eschatology could be considered, then, the
formal articulation of Christian hope.
The Eschatological Future is
Contained in the Present.
And yet we know that hope in the
future colors the present at every turn. There is an ambiguity in the Bible
between what has been accomplished and what shall be accomplished.
It is often not clear in the Hebrew prophets, for example, whether they are
talking about the present or the future. When the Second Isaiah says, for
example “’Comfort, comfort my people’ says your God, speak tenderly to Jerusalem
and say to her that her hard service has been completed” (Is 40) – is the
prophet talking about something realized in the present or anticipated in the
future? In one sense, he is referring to an event in time, the end of the Exile;
but it is by no means clear that the exile was actually over when these words
were uttered. Furthermore, the meaning of this passage as Scripture is not
exhausted by its historical referent. Indeed, the very reason it was preserved
as Scripture by communities of faith was their conviction that it had to do with
an ongoing hope, not simply a completed event in the past.
Jesus told many parables about the
coming Kingdom that were couched in the metaphor of present alertness. Because
the people of God expect the Kingdom which is to come, they are to be vigilant
and always prepared in the present moment (e.g., Mt 22: 1-14//Lk 14: 16-24; Mt
24: 36-51// Mk 13: 32-37.) . Both Luke and Paul speak of the Holy Spirit as a
guarantee of what is yet to come. In Acts, Luke describes the outpouring of the
Spirit as proof that the future messianic age is a present reality. Signs and
wonders (Acts 2:1-21), unity (Acts 2: 42-27; 4:32-35; 10: 34-36) and
perseverance (Acts 16: 16-34) in the church, confirm that the hope of Jesus’
people is not in vain. Paul describes the Spirit as a deposit securing our full
inheritance which is yet to come (2 Cor 5:5; Eph 1: 13-14.) New Testament
eschatology teaches us that we do not experience the Kingdom in its complete
reality; but we are sure that it will come because of the signs of its coming
are already present.
Eschatology an Antidote to
Perfectionism.
So Christian eschatology speaks of the
“future-present” of God’s redemption and the “already-but-not-yet” quality of
Christian faith. It is vital to maintain a balance between both poles. The
Kingdom, though not fully present, is still really present through the power of
the Holy Spirit. But the reverse is equally true. The Kingdom, though really
present, is not fully present. Christ has come, but the church still prays,
“Come, Lord Jesus.” This last point is especially important because it
safeguards against the scourges of Christian idealism and perfectionism. We are
able to envision the promised Kingdom of justice and peace and to see true signs
of its reality in the here and now. But we are not driven to discouragement or
despair because our lives do not fully reflect that rule.
Christian perfectionists condemn or
abandon the present because of its failure to live up to an ideal. For that
reason, Christian perfectionism can take a heavy toll on human relationships
because no matter how hard we try or how good our intentions, in real life
people will always fall short of the glory of God. Because they fixate on the
promised ideal, Christian perfectionists cannot be reconciled to the actuality
of life in the present. Leo Tolstoy, for example, became more and more rigidly
committed to the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount, believing that anything less
than a perfect observance of Jesus’ commands was a failure of faith. But in his
zeal to actualize an ideal of Christlike love Tolstoy ended up neglecting his
children and abused his wife. He became utterly intolerant of human weakness.
Tolstoy’s perfectionism made him a very difficult person to live with, admired
by the masses, but a tyrant to those closest to him. Interestingly, Tolstoy
became fiercely contemptuous of sexuality and marriage as fatal concessions to
carnality and contrary to the spiritual ideals of Jesus. His short story “The
Kreutzer Sonata” is about a man who despises the very idea of his marriage so
passionately he kills his wife. The story is a thinly veiled description of
Tolstoy’s own deeply conflicted feelings and he demonstrated the depths of his
cruelty by insisting that his wife Sonia correct and edit the manuscript for
publication.
Because marriage is incarnational and
sacramental, husbands and wives cannot separate their devotion to Christ from
their day to day treatment of one another. They are enjoined to “submit to one
another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph 5:21) and to show forth Christ-like
virtues. In this way they can stand as a sign to the world of the possibility of
agapic love.
However, because Christian marriage is
a sign of eschatological hope, pointing beyond itself to a not-yet-realized
consummation, it cannot be discredited by the shortcomings of individual
marriages. By the grace of God, we are enabled to show forth the Kingdom
realities of forbearance, reconciliation and unity; but to accept that they will
not be perfect and complete in themselves because they are eschatological. The
presence of these gracious realities is not negated by their absence at other
moments. There are times in each marriage that we can identify as moments of
kairos, luminous with the promised reconciliation of all things in Christ.
The essential thing to realize is that the value of these times is not annulled
because there are other times when we do not behave as we should. Our goal is
not to actualize some human ideal of perfection but to be heralds of God. If
couples can learn to discern the patterns of grace in their own marriages, those
moments will illuminate the long stretches of humdrum routine or painful
conflict that every marriage must endure, redeeming them with the promise that
even though we fall short of perfection here and now, the love of God cannot in
the end be defeated. At any moment, it may break in in all its glory and will
fill the whole universe at the end. Marriage should have the teleological
orientation of a pilgrimage in which both spouses participate in a growing
Christ-likeness and a journey towards communion with God.
Christianity’s Gift to Contemporary
Culture: A Renewed Vision of Marriage
Regardless of how Christian
communities respond to the redefining of male-female relationships and the
nature of the family, we are compelled to affirm the goodness and uniqueness of
marriage. This affirmation should be grounded in what we know of Jesus Christ as
the full revelation of God. We should not rest content with pious platitudes
about inclusivity or tolerance that have more to do with modern individualism
than with the Gospel. A renewed understanding of marriage using the full
resources of Christian tradition will be the Church’s best gift to a society
whose understanding of human sexuality is profoundly disordered. Couples caught
up in the consumerism of the wedding industry must be taught to treat their
marriages with awe and reverence. Marriage takes seriously our God-ordained
embodiment as male and female; it stands as a sign of fidelity in a world
contemptuous of commitments; and it anticipates the future communion we will
enjoy with God when Christ the bridegroom comes to claim his bride.
[i] See Michael Adams,
Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging
Values (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2003.)
[ii] Stanley Grenz,
“Theological Foundations for Male-Female Relationships,” Crux
35:3 (1999): 2-14; Theology for the Community of God (Grand
Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000), 53-76; Sexual Ethics: An Evangelical
Perspective (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990) passim.
[iii] Thomas Oden, The
Word of Life (Systematic Theology Volume 2) ( San Francisco:
Harper Collins, 1989), 94.
[iv] Gilbert Meilaender,
“Marital Community” in The Limits of Love: Some Theological
Explorations (University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1987), 115-129.
[vi] Denis de Rougement,
Love in the Western World, Montgomery Belgion, trans., revised
edition (New York: Pantheon, 1956), 153.
[vii] Meilaender, “Marital
Community”, 128.
[viii] David Popenoe,
“Modern Marriage: Revising the Cultural Script” in David Popenoe, Jean
Bethke Elshtain and David Blankenhorn, ed., Promises to Keep: The
Decline and Renewal of Marriage in America (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman
& Littlefield, 1996), 256-260.
[ix] Quoted in P. K.
Jewett, Man as Male and Female: A Study in Sexual Relationships,
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1975), 34.
[x] John Witte Jr., “The
Goods and Goals of Marriage: The Health Paradigm in Historical
Perspective” in John Wall, Don Browning, William J. Doherty and Stephen
Post, ed., Marriage, Health and the Professions (Grand Rapids:
Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2002), 58-59.
[xiii] Leon R. Kass, The
Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of our Nature (New York: The
Free Press, 1994), 8.
[xiv] “To make naturally
polygamous men accept the conventional institution of monogamous
marriage has been the work of centuries of Western civilization, with
social sanctions, backed by religious teachings and authority, as the
major instruments of transformation…” Leon R. Kass and Amy A. Kass,
“Introduction” to Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courtship and
Marriage (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000),
14.
[xv] Gilbert Meilaender,
“Touched by the Eternal,” Theology Today 50:4 (1994): 535-542.
[xvi] Gilbert Meilaender,
“Marriage in Harmony and Counterpoint” in Things That Count: Essays
Moral and Theological (Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books. 2000), 43.
[xvii] Evelyn Eaton
Whitehead and James D. Whitehead, Marrying Well: Possibilities in
Christian Marriage Today (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company,
Inc., 1981), 235.
[xx] See Barbara Dafoe
Whitehead, “The Decline of Marriage” in David Popenoe, Jean Bethke
Elshtain and David Blankenhorn, ed., Promises to Keep: Decline and
Renewal of Marriage In America, (Lanham, Md.: Rowan &Littlefield
Publishers, 1996), esp. 4-5 for an analysis of the individualistic,
narcissistic understanding of contemporary marriage.
This article is a revision of a paper
delivered at McMaster Divinity College on October 28 , 2003.
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