A Christian Vision of Marriage and Family, Part 1

Dr. Mohler is the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a council member for CBMW.  This post originally appeared at AlbertMohler.com on May 17, 2006.  

[Dr. Mohler is the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a council member for CBMW.  This post originally appeared at AlbertMohler.com on May 17, 2006.]

“For the first time inits history, Western civilization is confronted with the need to define the meaning of the terms ‘marriage’and ‘family.'” So states author Andreas J. Kostenberger who, with the assistance of David W. Jones has written God, Marriage, and Family: Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation.

This sense of crisis and the need for definition sets the stage for this book and its central thesis—that the only way out of our present cultural confusion is a return to a biblical vision of marriage and family.

As Kostenberger observes,”What until now has been considered a ‘normal’ family, made up of afather, a mother, and a number of children, has in recent years increasingly begun to be viewed as one among several options, which can no longer claim to be the only or even superior form of ordering human relationships. The Judeo-Christian view of marriage and the family with its roots in the Hebrew Scriptures has to a certain extent been replaced with a set of values that prizes human rights, self-fulfillment, and pragmatic utility on an individual and societal level. It can rightly be said that marriage and the family are institutions under seige in our world today, and that with marriage and the family, our very civilization is in crisis.”

In one sense, the statistics tell the story. The great social transformation of the last two hundred years has led to an erosion of the family and the franchising of its responsibilities. The authority of the family, especially that of the parents, has been compromised through the intrusion of state authorities, cultural influences, and social pressure. Furthermore, the loss of a biblical understanding of marriage and family has led to a general weakening of the institution, even among those who would identify themselves as believing Christians.

At the cultural level, Kostenberger suggests that the rise of a libertarian ideology explains the elevation of human freedom and a right to self-determination above all other principles and values. The quest for autonomy becomes the central purpose of human life, and any imposition of structure, accountability, boundaries, or restriction is dismissed as repressive and backward.

Within the Christian church, Kostenberger discerns what he identifies as a “lack of commitment to seriously engage the Bible as a whole.” As he correctly observes, evangelical Christianity has no shortage of Bible studies, media production, parachurch ministries, and the like. Yet, most Christians are woefully unaware of the deep biblical, theological, and spiritual foundations for marriage and the family that are central to the Christian tradition.

“Anyone stepping into a Christian or general bookstore will soon discover that while there is a plethora of books available on individual topics, such as marriage, singleness, divorce and remarriage, and homosexuality, there is very little material that explores on a deeper, more thoroughgoing level the entire fabric of God’s purposes for human relationships,” he observes. To fill this void, Kostenberger and Jones, along with Mark Liederbach, who contributed sections on contraception and reproductive technologies, attempt to offer an integrative approach that would establish a biblical theology of marriage and family. The primary focus of Scripture, they assert, is “the provision of salvation by God in and through Jesus Christ.” Nevertheless, the Bible also addresses an entire spectrum of issues related to marriage and the family—extended to issues such as human sexuality, gender, reproduction, parenthood, and more.

Kostenberger and his co-authors begin their consideration of marriage and family in the book of Genesis, establishing the starting point for these considerations in the doctrine of creation. Throughout the volume, a complementarian understanding of the relationship between men and women is affirmed, and the man and the woman, both created in the image of God, are assigned different responsibilities and roles.

Early in the book, Kostenberger makes an audacious claim: “Our sex does not merely determine the form of our sex organs but is an integral part of our entire being.”  This flies in the face of the postmodern claim that gender—indeed the very notions of male and female—are nothing more than the product of social construction and ideology. This complementarian arrangement is correctly grounded before the Fall and its consequences.

Yet, Kostenberger gives careful attention to the effect of the Fall and the consequences that follow. Thus, sin and its effects becomes the explanatory principle for all confusion over gender, sexuality, marriage, and the integrity of the family.