I appreciate how gracious Dani is, including not being a single who bashes marriage as a response to hurt. This helps me because I’ve felt so force-fed with the merits of marriage for decades. A danger of bad marriage theology is that it quietly devalues singleness: you’re only playing with the big boys if you get to suffer in marriage.
Thanks for unpacking this and for helping me dust off my perspective on the sweet value of marriage (and not feel threatened by it).
I think you summed up what could be best described as hair-shirt spirituality in a description of marriage that frankly doesn’t point to abundant eternal life at all. In contrast to the portrayal of the negative at the start, those last two paragraphs you wrote are superb.
As someone who’s observed and been blessed by friends with some very sweet marriages, you really captured the beauty and hint of the future their lives express.
I also worry when I see that kind of marriage is endurance and suffering language used without clarification that it will be misread or weaponised as meaning you should endure everything that happens in your marriage including things that absolutely should not be endured like domestic violence.
And as a side note, the whole but maybe the misspoke or the clip is out of context defence doesn’t really stand up if they/their ministry chose to edit and share that particular clip
Yes, I think your observation about the way in which framing marriage as a "walk to your death" so embeds suffering into marriage that it can be wickedly weaponised in the way you identify. Thanks for sharing Joanna!
What a fantastic post. The implications for this false way of thinking also trickle down to the relationship - if I think I'm supposed to be walking to my death then I'm maybe not going to try to work on our communication problems etc to try to get better.
Hi Dani. I massively appreciate the way you do "take the time to actually consider the theological rationale and implications of what he is saying" love it! So important to do and you do it so well! Just one question re Noah and sacrifice. Do you think there's a connection between the sacrifice in 8:20-21 & the promise in 9:11 as both carry the promise to not destroy? I'm just trying to think through (and possibly over-think :-)) the whole covenant/blood thing... No worries if you've not got time to reply, just a thought. Cheers.
HI Toby - thanks for the great question! My reading is that God's covenant with Noah is established before the flood in Genesis 6:9-22 (see especially 6:17) and it is this covenant which mean God remembers him (8:1) and saves him and all those with him, And so in 8:20-21 the burnt offering is a thanksgiving offering for God's faithfulness to his covenantal promises in saving them from the floodwaters, rather than a sacrifice which established or ratified the covenant.
And then in 9:11 God again recommits himself to the covenant (or establishes a new covenant?) though this time it is not only explicitly with Noah (cf. 6:17 where Noah's family is not explicitly named in the covenant but are caught up within it nonetheless) but also with his sons and all his descendants and even the living creatures that were with him. Here too the covenant is sacrifice/blood free.
Within the broader Ancient Near Eastern context covenants were a very standard mechanism by which political and social relationships were formalised and obligations/duties/blessings made explicit. While some of them involved blood letting, the majority of them didn't. The sacrificial features of certain biblical covenants are specifically related to the sense in which they were initiated and instituted by God to deal with sin.
Thanks for taking the time to reply… much appreciated, some helpful food for thought! I’m trying to work out if 6:17 is future tense, pointing forward to when God will establish his covenant because entering the ark (in same verse) is in the future… Anyway, I’ll keep exploring. I guess the key thing in relation to the point you were making is if Noahs burnt offering is giving thanks then it’s not sacrifice/shedding blood for the ratifying of the Noahic covenant. Cheers!
The "I will establish my covenant with you" does seem to be in the future tense (certainly in translation) but the context suggests the future establishing of the covenant is linked with them entering into the ark (as their means of salvation from the flood): "But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you."
That is, the established covenant is what sees them through the flood, not what is established after the flood (when it appears another covenant is made with Noah and his descendants, or perhaps a second part to the same covenant?).
Anyway, yes the main point I'm suggesting is that Noahs burnt offerings are thanksgiving rather than that which ratify the covenant. Thanks for engaging!
1a) on an adjacent point, i dun see why pple are excused of saying irresponsible things in the name of 'making a point' - doing so undermines the point u're making if it's built on faulty foundations!
b) i once pointed out (to friends) that a seasoned presbyterian pastor could not possibly think that the book of James was written by a Son of Thunder, but he said so to make a point on how 'Jesus' 3 closest disciples said the same thing'.. then someone said he's only human.. if he's only human, he shld be corrected like a human!
2) Yes I dislike when people pit holy against happy whether in marriage or other areas of life (but mostly marriage).. when those promoting marriage say "it is hard work", they follow it with more like "it is sad - suck it up; i suffered, u shld be too" examples.. but hard work can have joy too!!
3) Maybe the pastor in the clip thinks saying the convenant is with God instead of each other helps, but it just shows he has a spiritual-secular divide.. why is a promise to God better than a promise to each other? will Christians work harder to be a better spouse cos it is God the promise is made to? that just shows they dun value their spouse as an image-bearer because making a promise to a spouse doesnt hold weight like explicitly promising God..
Thankyou Dani for highlighting the hyper-individualistic reduction of a marriage vow exchange between the couple "going down the aisle" - Sorry for this long ramble but I have a question: is the preacher assuming marriage to be a husband and wife bond? He seems unwilling to say so. His careful construction of the wedding vow (where he is presiding) is of a complex system of triangulating individuals standing before a triangulated Diety . In the clip he avoids marriage vows as what are exchanged between a man and a woman. Note his use of "spouse". In terms of our Australian Marriage Act 2017 this clip leaves marriage as a bond between "two persons". Whether he intends to or not this is a pious way of avoiding any explicit recognition of the sex/gender of those making the vows. Since the Marriage Act of December 2017 marriage promises may have been exchanged, but all those betrothed in a husband-wife marriage now, whether we like it or not, have had to deal with the Marriage Act's misrepresentation of their marriage, and their vows. The Act defines marriage as between "two persons". How now do we who believe God's Word to give decisive direction and hope to marriage minister this hope publicly to our neighbours? Christian neighbours too? We who have sought to lawfully exchange vows as husband and wife in a wedding ceremony, civil or other, are now faced by a Marriage Act that tempts us to interpret the husband/wife vowed exchange in the way the Act seeks to redefine them. Does this clip help us address this problem? It does not. In fact the preacher's triangulation may tempt some to assume that it is they in their marriage (conducted in whatever liturgy, church or civil) that it is they who construct their own reality, who define themselves in their marriage relationship even if it is over against the presumptive power of the mistake of the Federal Parliament (and also endorsed by Mr Ruddock's Religious Freedom panel of 2018). To follow the preacher's triangulation will be to avoid facing the Act's mistake. It may not only mean that civil marriage ceremonies become the venue for a blatant coercion of the sexual identity of intending husband-wife marriage partners, to see themselves as but two persons. Are we whatever sexuality and gender that we alone will decide ourselves to be as we triangulate ourselves with some "other" before a Skied Deity? That self-creational motif seems basic to the preacher's triangulations.
Hi Dani. Yes, it's that lack of surety that renders the clip highly ambiguous in the present context. For example, the US President's Secretary of the Treasury uses the term "husband" for himself and his male "spouse". They evidently claim their right to say they each other's husbands, and they might even endorse the clip's view of mutual triangulation concerning the vows they made to each other. The clip itself does not explicitly affirm that marriage is a wife-husband union, but leaves that open merely as one option, a choice. And so the clip is (even if unintentionally so) an all too convenient endorsement of the view that reality is whatever you choose it to be ...
I appreciate how gracious Dani is, including not being a single who bashes marriage as a response to hurt. This helps me because I’ve felt so force-fed with the merits of marriage for decades. A danger of bad marriage theology is that it quietly devalues singleness: you’re only playing with the big boys if you get to suffer in marriage.
Thanks for unpacking this and for helping me dust off my perspective on the sweet value of marriage (and not feel threatened by it).
A happy marriage is a counter-cultural act.
Dani, thank you for getting past the Christianese and revealing the theology behind marriage.
I think you summed up what could be best described as hair-shirt spirituality in a description of marriage that frankly doesn’t point to abundant eternal life at all. In contrast to the portrayal of the negative at the start, those last two paragraphs you wrote are superb.
As someone who’s observed and been blessed by friends with some very sweet marriages, you really captured the beauty and hint of the future their lives express.
I also worry when I see that kind of marriage is endurance and suffering language used without clarification that it will be misread or weaponised as meaning you should endure everything that happens in your marriage including things that absolutely should not be endured like domestic violence.
And as a side note, the whole but maybe the misspoke or the clip is out of context defence doesn’t really stand up if they/their ministry chose to edit and share that particular clip
Yes, I think your observation about the way in which framing marriage as a "walk to your death" so embeds suffering into marriage that it can be wickedly weaponised in the way you identify. Thanks for sharing Joanna!
What a fantastic post. The implications for this false way of thinking also trickle down to the relationship - if I think I'm supposed to be walking to my death then I'm maybe not going to try to work on our communication problems etc to try to get better.
A very good point!
Dani, this is so good and helpful.
I don’t externalise God, and from this lens, the argument is void.
You have obviously spent considerable time formulating your theology of marriage and singleness. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us.
Hi Dani. I massively appreciate the way you do "take the time to actually consider the theological rationale and implications of what he is saying" love it! So important to do and you do it so well! Just one question re Noah and sacrifice. Do you think there's a connection between the sacrifice in 8:20-21 & the promise in 9:11 as both carry the promise to not destroy? I'm just trying to think through (and possibly over-think :-)) the whole covenant/blood thing... No worries if you've not got time to reply, just a thought. Cheers.
HI Toby - thanks for the great question! My reading is that God's covenant with Noah is established before the flood in Genesis 6:9-22 (see especially 6:17) and it is this covenant which mean God remembers him (8:1) and saves him and all those with him, And so in 8:20-21 the burnt offering is a thanksgiving offering for God's faithfulness to his covenantal promises in saving them from the floodwaters, rather than a sacrifice which established or ratified the covenant.
And then in 9:11 God again recommits himself to the covenant (or establishes a new covenant?) though this time it is not only explicitly with Noah (cf. 6:17 where Noah's family is not explicitly named in the covenant but are caught up within it nonetheless) but also with his sons and all his descendants and even the living creatures that were with him. Here too the covenant is sacrifice/blood free.
Within the broader Ancient Near Eastern context covenants were a very standard mechanism by which political and social relationships were formalised and obligations/duties/blessings made explicit. While some of them involved blood letting, the majority of them didn't. The sacrificial features of certain biblical covenants are specifically related to the sense in which they were initiated and instituted by God to deal with sin.
Thanks for taking the time to reply… much appreciated, some helpful food for thought! I’m trying to work out if 6:17 is future tense, pointing forward to when God will establish his covenant because entering the ark (in same verse) is in the future… Anyway, I’ll keep exploring. I guess the key thing in relation to the point you were making is if Noahs burnt offering is giving thanks then it’s not sacrifice/shedding blood for the ratifying of the Noahic covenant. Cheers!
The "I will establish my covenant with you" does seem to be in the future tense (certainly in translation) but the context suggests the future establishing of the covenant is linked with them entering into the ark (as their means of salvation from the flood): "But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you."
That is, the established covenant is what sees them through the flood, not what is established after the flood (when it appears another covenant is made with Noah and his descendants, or perhaps a second part to the same covenant?).
Anyway, yes the main point I'm suggesting is that Noahs burnt offerings are thanksgiving rather than that which ratify the covenant. Thanks for engaging!
1a) on an adjacent point, i dun see why pple are excused of saying irresponsible things in the name of 'making a point' - doing so undermines the point u're making if it's built on faulty foundations!
b) i once pointed out (to friends) that a seasoned presbyterian pastor could not possibly think that the book of James was written by a Son of Thunder, but he said so to make a point on how 'Jesus' 3 closest disciples said the same thing'.. then someone said he's only human.. if he's only human, he shld be corrected like a human!
2) Yes I dislike when people pit holy against happy whether in marriage or other areas of life (but mostly marriage).. when those promoting marriage say "it is hard work", they follow it with more like "it is sad - suck it up; i suffered, u shld be too" examples.. but hard work can have joy too!!
3) Maybe the pastor in the clip thinks saying the convenant is with God instead of each other helps, but it just shows he has a spiritual-secular divide.. why is a promise to God better than a promise to each other? will Christians work harder to be a better spouse cos it is God the promise is made to? that just shows they dun value their spouse as an image-bearer because making a promise to a spouse doesnt hold weight like explicitly promising God..
Thankyou Dani for highlighting the hyper-individualistic reduction of a marriage vow exchange between the couple "going down the aisle" - Sorry for this long ramble but I have a question: is the preacher assuming marriage to be a husband and wife bond? He seems unwilling to say so. His careful construction of the wedding vow (where he is presiding) is of a complex system of triangulating individuals standing before a triangulated Diety . In the clip he avoids marriage vows as what are exchanged between a man and a woman. Note his use of "spouse". In terms of our Australian Marriage Act 2017 this clip leaves marriage as a bond between "two persons". Whether he intends to or not this is a pious way of avoiding any explicit recognition of the sex/gender of those making the vows. Since the Marriage Act of December 2017 marriage promises may have been exchanged, but all those betrothed in a husband-wife marriage now, whether we like it or not, have had to deal with the Marriage Act's misrepresentation of their marriage, and their vows. The Act defines marriage as between "two persons". How now do we who believe God's Word to give decisive direction and hope to marriage minister this hope publicly to our neighbours? Christian neighbours too? We who have sought to lawfully exchange vows as husband and wife in a wedding ceremony, civil or other, are now faced by a Marriage Act that tempts us to interpret the husband/wife vowed exchange in the way the Act seeks to redefine them. Does this clip help us address this problem? It does not. In fact the preacher's triangulation may tempt some to assume that it is they in their marriage (conducted in whatever liturgy, church or civil) that it is they who construct their own reality, who define themselves in their marriage relationship even if it is over against the presumptive power of the mistake of the Federal Parliament (and also endorsed by Mr Ruddock's Religious Freedom panel of 2018). To follow the preacher's triangulation will be to avoid facing the Act's mistake. It may not only mean that civil marriage ceremonies become the venue for a blatant coercion of the sexual identity of intending husband-wife marriage partners, to see themselves as but two persons. Are we whatever sexuality and gender that we alone will decide ourselves to be as we triangulate ourselves with some "other" before a Skied Deity? That self-creational motif seems basic to the preacher's triangulations.
Hi Bruce,
In terms of your question - : is the preacher assuming marriage to be a husband and wife bond? - I presume he is, but don't know for sure.
Hi Dani. Yes, it's that lack of surety that renders the clip highly ambiguous in the present context. For example, the US President's Secretary of the Treasury uses the term "husband" for himself and his male "spouse". They evidently claim their right to say they each other's husbands, and they might even endorse the clip's view of mutual triangulation concerning the vows they made to each other. The clip itself does not explicitly affirm that marriage is a wife-husband union, but leaves that open merely as one option, a choice. And so the clip is (even if unintentionally so) an all too convenient endorsement of the view that reality is whatever you choose it to be ...