“This is not all, however, that needs to be noted. Especially in this era of hypercharged rhetoric surrounding marriage, it is good to be reminded that, revered as marriage is from a Christian standpoint, it is not the be-all and end-all of human relations or society. Jesus certainly “honored marriage by his blessed presence at the wedding in Cana,”9 but Jesus also noted that “those who are considered worthy of a place in that age [to come] and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.”10 Similarly, the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 contextualizes marriage as a penultimate good—that is, good as it meets the needs of those being married, but a good which may detract from single-minded devotion to “the affairs of the Lord.”11 Marriage, from a Reformed perspective, is creational; it is not eschatological.
2016 CRC Committee to Provide Pastoral Guidance re Same-sex Marriage (majority report)
1.) One wonders what examples the Committee would adduce for ‘hypercharged rhetoric surrounding marriage’?
2.) We must keep in mind that it is God Himself that instituted Marriage. It was God Himself who said, “It is not good that man should be alone, I will make a helper suitable for him.” It was God Himself who then created and presented the Woman for his marriage companion. This Genesis account gives us God’s hyper-charged rhetoric surrounding marriage and we would do well to consider God’s rhetoric.
3.) The fact that marriage is transcended in the eschaton proves exactly what when it comes to Marriage in this epoch?
4.) In the same I Corinthians 7 passage that is cited here as proof that marriage is not the “be all end all of human relations” we also read,
“…let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. 3 Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband.”
But the Apostle was probably engaged here in hyper-charged rhetoric, I’m sure.
Also consider that in this I Corinthians 7 passage the Holy Spirit inspired St. Paul communicates that singleness is a gift. This would communicate that God is pleased to grant this gift to some people but the norm remains marriage.
5.) Somehow it is concluded then that marriage is creational and not eschatological as if those two are sealed tight compartments that don’t have anything to do with one another. We must keep in mind that as God had the eschatological end in mind in His creation all creation is imbued with the eschatological. The creational realm reaches towards the eschatological precisely because the creation came from the hand of God, who, in His creation fashioned it for its eschatological end. One simply cannot conclude that somehow marriage is less important because it was only made for creation.
Second, Marriage was most certainly not made only for creation unless we misunderstand that Marriage does enter the eschaton via the Marriage of Christ and His bride, the Church. This wedding feast of the Lamb reminds us that Marriage here cannot be overestimated in terms of importance. God deigned to picture the relationship between the Son and the Church in the eschaton by giving us Marriage in creation.
Certainly, Marriage is not the be all end all of human relations but it is a model that God uses to communicate essential and indisputable truths such as marriage is defined as one woman for one man.
