Marriage is not our Mission 1
The United Methodist church has, over several decades now, spent an excessive amount of time and energy in conflicts over marriage. We need to drop it and move on to witnesses to Jesus Christ and carrying out the ministry of Christ.
Part 1
Christians have traditionally believed that God has created an orderly natural world and desires orderly human relationships as well. But does God mandate a particular social order? Too often Christians confuse their human task of ordering the social world with the Divine provision of the principles on which such a human ordering of the social world can take place.
But what about the nuclear family consisting of a man and a woman? Is that not a foundational ordering of the social world by God? No. Normal isn't normative.
Scripture tells us that the original family consisted of a male and a female, each drawn from the same primal human.
"Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:26 - 28, NRSV)
Genesis 2 gives a more specific account of this, explaining;
. .then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. . . .Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken (Genesis 2:7, 18-23 NRSV)
These accounts from scripture, particularly in their larger context, offer us two principles, but don’t actually tell us much about the structural basis for the human social order.
The first principle is fruitfulness. We humans should "be fruitful and multiple." Does fulfilling the principle of fecundity require sexual union between a man and a woman? Certainly in the ancient world sexual union was necessary for reproduction, but this wasn't a particularly human thing. And a man and woman might (like Abraham and Sarah) arrange to impregnate a servant/surrogate instead of the wife in order to have progeny. That humans breed just affirms that we are animals. Not even our (theoretical) monogamy particularly sets us apart.
And in the modern world sexual union is no longer necessary to have progeny, as fertility clinics and horse breeders can tell you. Indeed cloning is not impossible.
Fulfilling the principle that animated the first family, "be fruitful and multiple," does not require a monogamous sexual relationship between a man and woman resulting in their biological offspring. Subsequent families in scripture come in many different forms, largely dependent on circumstance and culture. More broadly fruitfulness comes in many forms. Nowhere do United Methodists teach that a marriage is valid only if it brings forth children only from the womb of a man's wife. Marriages, and relationships in general can be fruitful in many ways, and a lack of children in no way invalidates the relationship or makes it less part of God's will for humans.
The second principal found in Scripture (Genesis 2) is intimacy and companionship in carrying out the work in creation. Humans are whole with one another, that is the principle. Does this require that a man and a woman become "one flesh" through sexual intercourse? The most obvious thing to note is that the story is based on the removal of Adam’s rib, not the removal of his vagina. There must be more to "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" than physicality if humans are somehow different from animals. Or more importantly, if they are not to be bereft of intimacy absent the capacity to function sexually. Nowhere in the Bible is there the suggestion that the meeting of penis and vagina is necessary to or insures human companionship and intimacy in carrying out God's mission.
Are these the only principles? Is there a principled objection to anything other than marriage between a man and a woman? In Leviticus 18 the Law of Moses specifically forbids same-sex sexual relations among a longer list of specific prohibitions of sexual behavior. Plenty has been written about exegeting this passage, and so I won't go there. I'll simply note that if one takes Leviticus 18 as a principled prohibition on certain human behaviors then one must do the same for all of Leviticus and indeed all of the Torah. At best this will be inconvenient for contemporary United Methodists of all theological persuasions.
This is why Christians, specifically Protestants, typically try to distinguish the "ritual" laws of the Torah which were superseded by the coming of Christ and the "moral" laws which are eternal; of course carefully choosing the "moral" laws they wanted to include and those they wanted to ignore.
But in any case the distinction is specious. The entire Torah was designed (as Leviticus 18 specifically states) to set Israel apart from the nations whose land it was destined to seize. Worship of one God and its attendant rituals and sexual behavior are two sides of the same coin setting Israel apart from the nations of the earth to bear witness to God. Not using certain stone altars was as important avoiding sex with a first cousin. The artificial distinction between them doesn't do anything to resolve the problem raised by, for example, Matthew 5:17 - 20.
And even if one could somehow square the circle with Leviticus 18, what about the rest of the Old Testament? Suffice it to say that one cannot have it both ways. It cannot be a book of rules until the rules become inconvenient. Better a single standard informed by God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ.
The Torah, and indeed the entire Old Testament, is a narrative illustration of God's principles for human self-governance in relation to the purposes of our creator. Understood in this way we can derive coherent guidance as both believers in and followers of Christ. Absent this narrative and principled approach the Jewish Scripture cannot even function as a prophetic precursor to the coming of Jesus Christ. It bears no Christian meaning if interpreted literally as laws and predictions of the future. The New Testament doesn't merely reference the Jewish scripture, it establishes a radically new basis for interpreting the Jewish Scripture, making the entirety into a testament to God's love revealed in Jesus life, death and resurrection, and thus to Jesus as the Christ.
More concretely the entirety of scripture as God‘s Word is the narrative illustration of the life of the Trinity in relationship to creation. God Incarnate, the Word made flesh, the Spirit of the Torah made flesh in Christ, is both the culmination and clarification of this truth. Jesus Christ is the end of the Law even as he is the fulfillment of the Law. And it is the Spirit of Christ in the Church and abroad in humanity and creation that becomes our guide into the future, showing how the principles revealed in scripture are realized in our lives.
What about the fact that there are no examples in the Bible of same-sex marriage? Not surprising. There are no examples in the Bible of many things that we value today, There are no examples in the Bible of open heart surgery, in vitro fertilization, democracy, human rights, emancipation of slaves, and so on. The Bible is not predictive of the ways in which we humans will order our social lives according to its principles. What counts theologically are not specific affirmations of contemporary human behaviors, but coherence with the principles revealed in the Biblical narrative. Again, this is why we need not merely the text, but the Holy Spirit to lead us into our present and future.
However conceived the family, because of the covenantal relationships involved, is an outworking of God‘s providence and principles in relation to the human social order. But while a monogamous marriage between a man and a woman is historically by far the most common expression of the divine principles guiding the human relationships foundational to social life, it is not the normative or only expression of such relationships. What counts is the principles, not the forms.
Part 1
Christians have traditionally believed that God has created an orderly natural world and desires orderly human relationships as well. But does God mandate a particular social order? Too often Christians confuse their human task of ordering the social world with the Divine provision of the principles on which such a human ordering of the social world can take place.
But what about the nuclear family consisting of a man and a woman? Is that not a foundational ordering of the social world by God? No. Normal isn't normative.
Scripture tells us that the original family consisted of a male and a female, each drawn from the same primal human.
"Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:26 - 28, NRSV)
Genesis 2 gives a more specific account of this, explaining;
. .then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. . . .Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken (Genesis 2:7, 18-23 NRSV)
These accounts from scripture, particularly in their larger context, offer us two principles, but don’t actually tell us much about the structural basis for the human social order.
The first principle is fruitfulness. We humans should "be fruitful and multiple." Does fulfilling the principle of fecundity require sexual union between a man and a woman? Certainly in the ancient world sexual union was necessary for reproduction, but this wasn't a particularly human thing. And a man and woman might (like Abraham and Sarah) arrange to impregnate a servant/surrogate instead of the wife in order to have progeny. That humans breed just affirms that we are animals. Not even our (theoretical) monogamy particularly sets us apart.
And in the modern world sexual union is no longer necessary to have progeny, as fertility clinics and horse breeders can tell you. Indeed cloning is not impossible.
Fulfilling the principle that animated the first family, "be fruitful and multiple," does not require a monogamous sexual relationship between a man and woman resulting in their biological offspring. Subsequent families in scripture come in many different forms, largely dependent on circumstance and culture. More broadly fruitfulness comes in many forms. Nowhere do United Methodists teach that a marriage is valid only if it brings forth children only from the womb of a man's wife. Marriages, and relationships in general can be fruitful in many ways, and a lack of children in no way invalidates the relationship or makes it less part of God's will for humans.
The second principal found in Scripture (Genesis 2) is intimacy and companionship in carrying out the work in creation. Humans are whole with one another, that is the principle. Does this require that a man and a woman become "one flesh" through sexual intercourse? The most obvious thing to note is that the story is based on the removal of Adam’s rib, not the removal of his vagina. There must be more to "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" than physicality if humans are somehow different from animals. Or more importantly, if they are not to be bereft of intimacy absent the capacity to function sexually. Nowhere in the Bible is there the suggestion that the meeting of penis and vagina is necessary to or insures human companionship and intimacy in carrying out God's mission.
Are these the only principles? Is there a principled objection to anything other than marriage between a man and a woman? In Leviticus 18 the Law of Moses specifically forbids same-sex sexual relations among a longer list of specific prohibitions of sexual behavior. Plenty has been written about exegeting this passage, and so I won't go there. I'll simply note that if one takes Leviticus 18 as a principled prohibition on certain human behaviors then one must do the same for all of Leviticus and indeed all of the Torah. At best this will be inconvenient for contemporary United Methodists of all theological persuasions.
This is why Christians, specifically Protestants, typically try to distinguish the "ritual" laws of the Torah which were superseded by the coming of Christ and the "moral" laws which are eternal; of course carefully choosing the "moral" laws they wanted to include and those they wanted to ignore.
But in any case the distinction is specious. The entire Torah was designed (as Leviticus 18 specifically states) to set Israel apart from the nations whose land it was destined to seize. Worship of one God and its attendant rituals and sexual behavior are two sides of the same coin setting Israel apart from the nations of the earth to bear witness to God. Not using certain stone altars was as important avoiding sex with a first cousin. The artificial distinction between them doesn't do anything to resolve the problem raised by, for example, Matthew 5:17 - 20.
And even if one could somehow square the circle with Leviticus 18, what about the rest of the Old Testament? Suffice it to say that one cannot have it both ways. It cannot be a book of rules until the rules become inconvenient. Better a single standard informed by God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ.
The Torah, and indeed the entire Old Testament, is a narrative illustration of God's principles for human self-governance in relation to the purposes of our creator. Understood in this way we can derive coherent guidance as both believers in and followers of Christ. Absent this narrative and principled approach the Jewish Scripture cannot even function as a prophetic precursor to the coming of Jesus Christ. It bears no Christian meaning if interpreted literally as laws and predictions of the future. The New Testament doesn't merely reference the Jewish scripture, it establishes a radically new basis for interpreting the Jewish Scripture, making the entirety into a testament to God's love revealed in Jesus life, death and resurrection, and thus to Jesus as the Christ.
More concretely the entirety of scripture as God‘s Word is the narrative illustration of the life of the Trinity in relationship to creation. God Incarnate, the Word made flesh, the Spirit of the Torah made flesh in Christ, is both the culmination and clarification of this truth. Jesus Christ is the end of the Law even as he is the fulfillment of the Law. And it is the Spirit of Christ in the Church and abroad in humanity and creation that becomes our guide into the future, showing how the principles revealed in scripture are realized in our lives.
What about the fact that there are no examples in the Bible of same-sex marriage? Not surprising. There are no examples in the Bible of many things that we value today, There are no examples in the Bible of open heart surgery, in vitro fertilization, democracy, human rights, emancipation of slaves, and so on. The Bible is not predictive of the ways in which we humans will order our social lives according to its principles. What counts theologically are not specific affirmations of contemporary human behaviors, but coherence with the principles revealed in the Biblical narrative. Again, this is why we need not merely the text, but the Holy Spirit to lead us into our present and future.
However conceived the family, because of the covenantal relationships involved, is an outworking of God‘s providence and principles in relation to the human social order. But while a monogamous marriage between a man and a woman is historically by far the most common expression of the divine principles guiding the human relationships foundational to social life, it is not the normative or only expression of such relationships. What counts is the principles, not the forms.
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