Do Christians Really Have Anything To Say About Marriage?

Millions of us Christians oppose same-sex marriage as a perversion of our Creator's plan. Our opposition is based upon what our Creator has revealed about marriage and upon the fact that marriage is a picture of Christ's relationship to his bride, the church, as Paul teaches in Ephesians:

"Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. - Eph 5:31-32 ESV

In my previous post I promised to review the history of same-sex marriage in the United States. In fact, if you wish mere historical data, that has long since been done. You can easily access names and dates for such information. For instance:

• The history of gay marriage in the United States and
• Timeline of gay-rights movement in the U.S.
• Supreme Court DOMA Decision Rules Federal Same-Sex Marriage Ban Unconstitutional

We Christians are not, however, of this world. We are ruled by a different king and guided by His will and decisions. Jesus made this abundantly clear when he stood before Pilate, condemned by the Jewish Sanhedrin of being an insurrectionist.

Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world." - Jhn 18:36 ESV

Christ does rule the world in spite of its rebellion against him. We know this as his kingdom of the left hand. In that kingdom he maintains a measure of peace and order through various types of earthly governments, including the republic under which we Americans gratefully live.

However, we who have been graciously reborn into the family of God live under Christ's rule in a different kingdom, one we call Christ's kingdom of the right hand. In this kingdom he has revealed Himself as both Creator and Redeemer. In this kingdom we joyfully receive forgiveness for our sins and the certain promises of the resurrection and life eternal. In this kingdom we are guided by the Spirit of Christ who works through His revealed Word and the Sacraments.

The written Word of God (Bible) has come under severe attack during the past two centuries. No longer is it considered authoritative in matters of faith and doctrine. No longer is it seen as the inspired Word of God. The majority of American mainline protestant churches now view the Scriptures as an historical document written by fallible humans, but through which God somehow speaks. It is no longer viewed as inerrant. It is filled with historical inaccuracies. Yet the teachers in these churches want to keep the Bible as a reference book for the church as we seek to apply the gospel to life in the 20th and now the 21st centuries.

 I wrote about the historical-critical method and the authority of the written Scriptures in some postings a few years ago. For review check out the following links and the links embedded within them:

• Beware of philosophy
• Can there be such a thing as Biblical history? 
• Is the Bible history or legend and myth?
• How brilliant we Bible scholars are!
• Foolish spiritual words
• The Spiritual Man makes judgments about all things

My point for today is simple: if the Bible is not God's Word, then we have nothing to say about the definition of marriage. We will have to acknowledge that marriage is merely a human institution that is evolving and changing like everything else. Thus we will have to embrace whatever is happening and try to speak about it in the most loving possible manner. 

In my next post I intend to point out some of that thinking as I find it in a paper about same-sex marriage, presented by a theologian of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. 

Dreams, Visions And Enthusiasm

Although haphazard, I do have somewhat of a journal of my dreams. As I look back at them I am often confused. What do those symbols and stories mean? And how important are my dreams? Seldom, if ever, have I considered the possibility that they are messages from God. Yet I read many stories in the Bible about various believers receiving visions and dreams with messages and directions from God. Here's the Apostle Peter's vision just prior to a visit from men sent by the Roman centurion Cornelius, a devout man who believed in and prayed to God.

The next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. And he became hungry and wanted something to eat, but while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance and saw the heavens opened and something like a great sheet descending, being let down by its four corners upon the earth. In it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air. 

And there came a voice to him: "Rise, Peter; kill and eat." 

But Peter said, "By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean." 

And the voice came to him again a second time, "What God has made clean, do not call common." 

This happened three times, and the thing was taken up at once to heaven. 

Now while Peter was inwardly perplexed as to what the vision that he had seen might mean, behold, the men who were sent by Cornelius, having made inquiry for Simon's house, stood at the gate and called out to ask whether Simon who was called Peter was lodging there. And while Peter was pondering the vision, the Spirit said to him, "Behold, three men are looking for you. Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I have sent them." - Act 10:9-20 ESV (see also Acts 11:4-18)

My, but do I have a ton of questions when I read this account—not about Peter, but about why the Spirit has given this tale to us and what I personally am to make of it. Yes, I know that the story tells us that the Gospel is not to be confined to the Jews. It is for all men. But that's not what I'm getting at. What I want to know is whether you and I are being told to expect similar dreams or visions from God giving directions and messages?

The usual answer to these questions is No! The time for that ceased once God's revelation about Christ and His salvation was given and recorded by the Apostles. The Spirit does continue to speak to us, but always and only through the objective written Word of God. The Spirit does not speak through our own personal, subjective visions and dreams. In this context one may quote Paul's  instructions to young Pastor Timothy,

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. - 2Ti 3:14-17 ESV

The apostle seems to be saying that the God-breathed or inspired Scripture, both the Old and the New Testaments, is all the man of God needs to be competent and completely furnished to do his work. Teach the Scripture. You do not need additional visions and dreams, nor should you expect them. Study the Bible and seize whatever opportunities come along to share God's Word. Do not expect further visions like Peter's or the direct speaking of the Spirit such as we read about in the Acts of the Apostles (cf. Acts 11:27-30; 13:1-3; 16:9-10; 18:9-11). That time of the Apostles is past. 

Dr. Martin Luther was deeply concerned about this. He called it enthusiasm, the direct internal speaking of the Holy Spirit (the word enthusiasm originally meant 'God in me'). Luther's concerns grew particularly out of his conflicts with Thomas Müntzer, an early disciple of Luther who later broke with him. Müntzer believed that God's teachings came directly from the Holy Spirit. He opposed the doctrines of justification by faith alone and of the Scripture as the exclusive source of divine truth. As an exponent of the supremacy of the inner light of the Holy Spirit as against the authority of Scripture, Müntzer was said by Luther to have swallowed the Holy Spirit, “feathers and all” ( “Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments.” Luther's Works. Vol. 40:83. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1958). Müntzer's enthusiasm ultimately led to a peasants' war and his own death. Luther writes about enthusiasm in the Book of Concord, Smalcald Articles (III:viii (9-13).

In short: enthusiasm clings to Adam and his children from the beginning to the end of the world—fed and spread among them as poison by the old dragon. It is the source, power, and might of all the heresies, even that of the papacy and Mohammed. Therefore we should and must insist that God does not want to deal with us human beings, except by means of his external Word and sacrament. Everything that boasts of being from the Spirit apart from such a Word and sacrament is of the devil. For God even desired to appear to Moses first in the burning bush and by means of the spoken word; no prophet—not even Elijah or Elisha—received the Spirit outside of or without the Ten Commandments; John the Baptist was not conceived without Gabriel’s preceding Word, nor did he leap in his mother’s womb without Mary’s voice; and St. Peter says: the prophets did not prophesy “by human will” but “by the Holy Spirit,” indeed, as “holy people of God.”However, without the external Word, they were not holy—much less would the Holy Spirit have moved them to speak while they were still unholy. Peter says they were holy because the Holy Spirit speaks through them.

OK, but that still doesn't answer my original concern about dreams and visions—or does it? What if you or I have what we consider to be a Peter-and-the-sheet experience or Paul's come-over-to-Macedonia call? We have not rejected the authority of Scripture and the central doctrine about God declaring us justified by faith in Jesus Christ alone. And yet you or I sense God's leading in a dream or vision. What about that? 


Let's come back to this vital topic and the Biblical worldview next time.

God's Two Revelations - Psalm 19

I've seen many young people deeply troubled by the assumed conflict between modern science and the Bible. Older folks struggle too. As recently as this week a retired geo-physicist shared his appreciation for the help I gave him to find ways to reconcile his lifelong experience as a scientist with his faith in Jesus and the authority of the Bible.

This is, undoubtedly, a very real challenge for many and a leading cause for the destruction of childhood Christian faith. There are significant resources and great and powerful reasons why that need not happen. Here are some organizations and individuals working toward this common goal of reconciling modern science with the Bible.

1. Reasons to Believe - sample article

Reasons To Believe : Hobbits Grab Headlines, Again!: Our assertion is that the hominids were animals created by God. These extraordinary creatures walked erect and possessed some level of intelligence. These abilities allowed them to cobble crude tools and even adopt some level of "culture." The RTB model maintains that the hominids were not spiritual beings made in God's image, however. RTB's model reserves this status exclusively for modern humans. Based on this view we predict that biological similarities will exist among the hominids and modern humans to varying degrees. But also major biological differences, as this new study attests.

2. Answers in Genesis - sample article

Creationism:There are various forms of creationism, including old-earth creationism, progressive creationism, and young-earth creationism (some also label the Intelligent Design Movement as being a form of creationism). Most forms of creationism contend that an intelligence, not natural processes, created the universe and all life. However, only young-earth creationism is supported by a straightforward reading of Genesis without introducing outside suppositions and beliefs foreign to the text (e.g., that “science” has proven the ancient age of the earth).

 3. Genesis Veracity - sample article

Level of Logic of Old Earth Creationism: Hugh Ross (Reasons to Believe) would have us believe that after billions of years of geological processes (which caused the rock strata that we see), Noah's Flood then occurred only in Mesopotamia, and wiped out all of humanity except the eight who were saved on the Ark. Why would some of the humans have not successfully migrated away from a merely regional flood? And why would have all of humanity (Ross estimates 1 billion people) been confined to merely Mesopotamia, thousands of years ago? (And why would all of the animals also have been only in Mesopotamia, with none having migrated from harm's way?)

4. Evidence for God from Science - sample article

Does Genesis One Conflict with Science? Day-Age Interpretation : I would first like to point out that God has not revealed the entire creation process in the Genesis creation account, but only that which is particularly relevant to mankind. Many events in the creation account of the Bible have been intentionally left out (unicellular life forms, dinosaurs, etc.), I believe, because they would have been difficult to express in the Hebrew language, and would have lead to confusion, since they would not have been understood through the vast majority of mankind's existence (i.e., only understandable in the last two centuries). The interpretation of the Genesis creation account should not be made independently of the remainder of the Bible, as many "young-earth" creationists do. The interpretation presented here is based upon the creation accounts found throughout the entire Bible (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, etc.¹) as it relates to God's creation of the heavens and the Earth, and is consistent with all the biblical texts in addition to the revelations of science.

The Bible was the first written work to describe the expanding universe model for the universe (indicated by verses stating that God spreads out the heavens, 2), which is consistent with the Big Bang model.

5. Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne - sample article

How the Resurrection Makes Sense: In the history of much Christian thinking, and in much popular piety, people have thought of themselves as if they were apprentice angels. In that case, the "real me" would be a spiritual component, trapped in a body but awaiting release at death. Today, that is an increasingly difficult belief to hold. Studies of brain damage and the effects of drugs show how dependent our personalities are on the state of our bodies. Charles Darwin has taught us that our ancestry is the same as that of the other animals. Earth was once lifeless and life seems to have emerged from complex chemical interactions. Many scientists think that we are nothing but collections of molecules and they write popular books to assert this belief. 

Yet that also is a pretty odd thing to believe. Could just a bunch of chemicals write Shakespeare or compose Handel's Messiah, or discover the laws of chemistry, for that matter? There is something more to us than the merely material. Yet, whatever that extra something is, it is surely intimately connected with our bodies. We are a kind of package deal, mind and body closely related and not wholly detachable from each other. It is a puzzle.

These samples are enough to indicate that there is plenty of controversy among Christian apologists as they work diligently to demonstrate that there are no irreconcilable conflicts between God's two revelations in nature and the Bible.

In addition, there are conservative Jewish resources that are also very helpful. Chief among them is the work of Gerald Schroeder. Once a teacher at MIT, he now resides in Jerusalem.

6. Gerald Schroeder - sample article:

The Age of the Universe:  In 1959, a survey was taken of leading American scientists. Among the many questions asked was, "What is your estimate of the age of the universe?" Now, in 1959, astronomy was popular, but cosmology - the deep physics of understanding the universe - was just developing. The response to that survey was recently republished in Scientific American - the most widely read science journal in the world. Two-thirds of the scientists gave the same answer. The answer that two-thirds - an overwhelming majority - of the scientists gave was, "Beginning? There was no beginning. Aristotle and Plato taught us 2400 years ago that the universe is eternal. Oh, we know the Bible says 'In the beginning.' That's a nice story; it helps kids go to bed at night. But we sophisticates know better. There was no beginning." 

That was 1959. In 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered the echo of the Big Bang in the black of the sky at night, and the world paradigm changed from a universe that was eternal to a universe that had a beginning. Science had made an enormous paradigm change in its understanding of the world. Understand the impact. Science said that our universe had a beginning. I can't overestimate the import of that scientific "discovery." Evolution, cave men, these are all trivial problems compared to the fact that we now understand that we had a beginning. Exactly as the Bible had claimed for three millennia. 

Of course, the fact that there was a beginning does not prove that there was a beginner. Whether the second half of Genesis 1:1 is correct, we don't know from a secular point of view. The first half is "In the beginning;" the second half is "God created the Heavens and the Earth." Physics allows for a beginning without a beginner. I'm not going to get into the physics of that here. "The Science of God," my second book, examines this in great detail.

7. The Torah Science Foundation - sample article:

Time and Purpose in Science and Mathematics: The infinite number of questions asked in every sphere of human culture can be reduced to three general, fundamental questions. These questions contain many more detailed, more elaborately phrased questions, which can be expressed in complex philosophical forms, or spelled out through professional scientific analysis. These questions relate to both the simplest objects encountered in everyday life and to complex cultural or scientific systems, to concrete objects and realities that people cannot help but notice, and to creations of the mind, whose actual existence is uncertain. These three questions may be summarized in very simple words: "What?" "How?" "What For?"

In more abstract language we can say that "What" is the question about the essence of things, their definition and identity, and their relationship to other entities. "How" is the question of the reason for things: why do things happen the way they do, what brings about their existence, and what causes various events. "What For" is the question of purpose: what is the purpose for which certain things are done, or exist.

There is enough information here to keep all of us busy for many, many hours. Regardless of where you end up in your conclusions, there is one thing that impresses me in them all. They take the Bible very seriously. They believe in its authority. God has two revelations, nature and His Word (Psalm 19:1-5). And the two agree with one another.