Can I tempt you?” my colleague propositioned.
“Probably, but no, thank you,” I countered.
“Why ever not?” she replied.
“Because,” I said, “I’m a Christian. I will consummate my relationship only with a spouse, because Jesus will consummate his relationship only with the church.”
For over twenty years, I have wondered about those words. I could have said, “Because I’m a Christian, I believe that marriage is the appropriate context for sex,” with 1 Corinthians 7:9 in mind. “But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” Yet this does not explain why marriage is the appropriate context for sex. And if we transpose this conversation into the current debate over same-sex relationships, I believe and will argue accordingly (section 3), that Jesus’s relationship with the church also explains, albeit mysteriously, why marriage is sexually differentiated (male-female).
The point that marriage is sexually differentiated can be argued from Matthew 19:4–6, where Jesus defines marriage by appealing to Genesis 1:27 and 2:24. Because Jesus refuses to accommodate no-fault divorce, other accommodations (like same-sex marriage) would appear to be out of the question too. Is that not sufficient?
Perhaps not, if these conclusions are deemed relative. For example, one might argue that Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 specify male and female because male-female describes a relatively common species of sexual relationship (vis-à-vis male-male and female-female). Male-female describes a statistical mode: not an ethical norm. Or one might argue that creation is relative to incarnation. For even if Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 are granted prescriptive status, their procreative potential, to make the genealogy of Jesus possible, is fulfilled in his coming. Therefore, sexual differentiation upon which procreation depends is no longer necessary. Might this not explain why the New Testament passes over procreation in silence? There is then a little more work to do.
1. The Mystery of Marriage
Christ and his church are the reason why Paul (Eph 5:30–32) not only presents marriage as sexually-differentiated (section 3) but also as monogamous (section 2). Christ and his church are the reason why monogamous sexually-differentiated marriage (henceforth MSDM) cannot be relativized by polygamy (section 2) or by attempts to relativize sexual differentiation in the incarnation (section 4) or in creation (vis-à-vis the eschaton) (section 5). Attempts to relativize MSDM are attempts to homogenize it, to make different forms of marriage the same. This makes MSDM less significant; although note well: arguments against the homogenization of marriage (sections 4 and 5) do not make a knock-down case against same-sex forms. This would require consideration of texts (e.g., Lev 18:22; Rom 1:26–27; 1 Cor 6:9; 1 Tim 1:10) that lie beyond the scope of this essay.
What follows receives marriage by faith (Prov 30:18–19). Specifically, faith receives as revelation the “great (μέγα) mystery” (Eph 5:32) that Christ and the church are the reason for marriage. Three things then follow. First, if theology is faith seeking understanding, then marriage (and a theology thereof) is best not reduced to an understanding of its goods (procreation, etc.), for that would put understanding before faith. That is, whereas the goods of marriage can be understood by anyone, the mystery of marriage (that Christ and the church are the reason for marriage) can only be received by faith. Second, although marriage is a general—even if not universal—phenomenon and, in that respect, comparable to concepts of the divine, special revelation in Ephesians 5:30–32 gives marriage universal definition. And third, this special revelation—the mystery that Christ and the church are the reason for marriage—can, and will, be understood in three ways that correspond to the three persons of the Trinity. For example, the third section (below) explores this mystery as it corresponds to the Son as the formal cause of marriage. That is, church and Christ as bride and groom are the reason why the form of marriage is sexually differentiated. And since Christ is the groom because he is biologically male, marriage is sexually differentiated because Jesus is. Because of Jesus, Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 cannot be deemed relative.
But before then, and because the faith that theology seeks to understand is handed down (Latin tradere) via tradition, traditional Christian teaching on marriage will be considered first. And this begins with Augustine. Augustine famously delineates three (ascending) goods of marriage: procreation, fidelity, and sacrament. Procreation, being the lowest, is not essential to marriage. The highest, sacrament, has two-fold significance. It is a bond between the spouses that points to something greater. It also symbolizes the one city of God subjected to the one God.
Later tradition refines the symbol (or sacrament) to that of Christ and the church. For example, Aquinas writes about “the union of Christ with the church, signified by matrimony.” And elsewhere,
Since, then, the union of husband and wife gives a sign of the union of Christ and the Church, that which makes the sign must correspond to that whose sign it is. Now, the union of Christ and the Church is a union of one to one to be held forever.… Necessarily, then, matrimony as a sacrament of the Church is a union of one man to one woman to be held indivisibly, and this is included in the faithfulness by which man and wife are bound to one another.
Therefore, in contrast to later refinement, it is notable that within Anglican tradition Cranmer omits this third good and splits the first. He omits symbol/sacrament in reaction to Catholic teaching and splits procreation into procreation per se, on the one hand, and procreation as a cure for concupiscence, on the other. Fidelity remains.
But despite severing marriage as a sign of divine action, this good continues to echo in the wider tradition. Barth observes that the monogamy of marriage follows from the exclusivity of the covenant. And he notes that this covenant is summed up in the marriage metaphor of Ephesians 5:22–33. Tom Wright resonates,
Heaven and earth … are different, radically different; but they are made for each other in the same way (Revelation is suggesting) as male and female. And, when they finally come together, that will be cause for rejoicing in the same way that a wedding is: a creational sign that God’s project is going forwards; that opposite poles within creation are made for union, not competition; that love and not hate have the last word in the universe; that fruitfulness not sterility is God’s will for creation.
Echoes like these are undoubtedly the source of my words to my colleague. But before we consider them further, the goods of marriage demand several qualifications. First, “The LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him’” (Gen 2:18). Marriage, then, is a particular form of a general male-female good. So we marry because marriage itself is good. We do not marry just to procreate, or to be faithful, or to signify a greater reality. The goodness of sexually differentiated marriage (henceforth SDM, monogamous or otherwise—polygamy will be considered in the second section) precedes, transcends, and cannot be reduced to, the goods of marriage. Second, “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (Gen 3:16). Sin belies the reduction of the goodness of SDM to a self-evident truth of natural law. Such goodness must be revealed through Scripture. One corollary is that arguments for and against same-sex relations cannot be reduced to self-evident truths either. Third, how can we give due weight to the goodness—and goods—of marriage without idolising them? And conversely, how can marriage signify a greater reality without losing its own goodness?
1.1. The Trinity
This third two-part question will be addressed through a theological interpretation of Ephesians 5:28–31. Paul writes that,
husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” (NIV)
“For this reason” (Eph 5:31) can mean a number of things. These correspond to three of the four Aristotelian causes. If I make a table, the material cause of the table is the wood, although the material cause will not be considered in what follows. The efficient cause of the table is my agency in making it. The formal cause is the design of the table. And the final cause might be the community that forms around that table. If this is what it means to create a table, then what might it mean for God to create marriage? What does it mean for marriage itself?
First, “for this reason” could mean that because we are members of his body, marriage is possible. This makes grace, by which membership is possible, the efficient cause of marriage. Second, “for this reason” could mean that because membership takes the form of a body, which is the bride of Christ, a man will marry a woman. This makes the bridegroom metaphor the formal cause of marriage, and the topic of the third section. Barth puts it this way, albeit referring to Yahweh and Israel, “We have here the unattainable prototype of what is realized in the human sphere between husband and wife.” And again, “The basis of love and marriage is not, then, the creation of woman out of man, but behind and above creation the co-existence of Christ and his community.” Third, “for this reason” could mean that the goal of marriage is to procreate members of his body. This makes being members of his body the final cause of marriage. Marriage makes the church and genealogy of Jesus possible through procreation.
Further, we can entertain all three causes if we say that the Father corresponds to the efficient cause, the Son to the formal, and the Spirit to the final. The one God then acts indivisibly through these three causes. What does this mean for marriage? Marriage is good because it is the initiative and gift of the Father. Marriage is sexually differentiated because it follows the form of church and Christ as bride and groom. Marriage is perfected by the Spirit for Christ and his church. The latter will occupy us in the next section.
2. The Perfection of Marriage
Christ and his church are the reason why Paul (Eph 5:30–32) presents marriage as sexually-differentiated. But if this reason is understood solely in a final sense, i.e., the goal of marriage is to procreate Christ’s lineage and body, the church, then polygamy, which lies in the lineage of Jesus, is not self-evidently precluded. Polygamy relativizes the implied bride-groom monogamy of Eph 5:30–32. But if the Spirit corresponds to the final cause, then the goal of marriage is not only to procreate Christ’s lineage and body, but also to become like Christ and his church, i.e., monogamous. This is what it means for the Spirit to perfect marriage for Christ and his church.
Perhaps we can say that when the Spirit perfects, the Spirit enables creation to be the good it was meant to be. The Spirit enables creation to be good in itself. For example, in Matthew 16:16, when Peter confesses that Jesus is the Messiah, Tom Smail notes that Peter answers for himself (i.e., in himself) but not by himself. The Spirit enables Peter to be the good who he was meant to be—himself for Jesus. In this sense, “the mysterious relationship between grace and freedom is closely connected with the even more mysterious relationship between the Spirit and Son.”
We can now return to the third two-part question, How can we give due weight to the goodness—and goods—of marriage without idolising them? Marriage and its goods/goodness are subordinate to the Son because, as the next section shows, the Son is their formal cause. The cause (the Son) is greater than its effect (the goods), so the goods are not idolised. Conversely, how can marriage signify a greater reality without losing its own goodness? How can it be good in itself and not the mere means to some good? Because the Spirit enables creation to be good in itself—the good it was meant to be. And because marriage is created, the Spirit enables marriage to be the good it was meant to be—a good that will be outlined both finally and formally. First, what might it mean for the Spirit to enable marriage? Calvin writes that marriage is an ordinance, like ‘farming, building, cobbling, and barbering’. And elsewhere he notes that ‘the knowledge of all that is most excellent in human life [epitomized by Oholiab and Bezalel’s workmanship (Exod 31:1–6)] is said to be communicated to us through the Spirit of God’. The Spirit, therefore, not only enables the sanctification of individual believers, but also the institution of general ordinances. Second, the Spirit enables marriage to be the final good it was meant to be—marriage for Christ and the church. Christ and the church are the final destination for marriage. The Spirit can enable marriage towards its destination because the formal good—here the institution of MSDM—provides the possibility for procreation, even if particular marriages are not fertile. And because procreation makes possible the genealogy of Jesus and every person in the church, marriage is for Christ and the church. Procreation therefore follows from sexual differentiation.
Third, the Spirit also enables marriage to be the formal good it was meant to be, which is to enable marriage to follow the form of church and Christ as bride and groom. (This form, which is revealed and therefore good, will be discussed in the next section.) This means that the Spirit enables marriage to be monogamously male-female. We see that perfecting work in action as Scripture moves from the polygamy of the patriarchs to the monogamy of Jesus’s time.
We should not be surprised, then, at the need to discern a history of sex that elaborates a nature of sex—a history that includes, of course, all kinds of perversion and exploitation, but which may also include (can we rule this out a priori?) differentiations, elaborations, complexifications that are essentially constructive. Even the married-single alternative presented by the New Testament is a salvation-historical development upon the “male and female” of Genesis.
It is because of the Spirit, then, that Jesus interprets Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 to mean one thing and not another (Matt 19:4–6), i.e., not one that allows for polygamy. Understood in this way, Christ’s relationship with the church not only forms marriage (the formal reading) but does so through time. Thus the movement from garden to garden-city—from Genesis 2 to Revelation 21—is therefore complemented by a movement from forms of one-flesh union that include polygamy to one monogamous male-female form. So, in the same way that the Spirit works through us, cultivating (or perfecting) the garden into actual cities to more fully reflect Revelation 21, cultivating (or perfecting) polygamousforms of one-flesh unions into one monogamous male-female form more fully reflects church and Christ as bride and groom.
Three qualifications follow concerning, first, the form of marriage vis-à-vis married individuals; second, the particularity of MSDM vis-à-vis homogeneity; and third, the goodness of marriage: sexual differentiation vis-à-vis procreation.
First, the perfection of the form of marriage concerns precisely that—the form of marriage rather than the individuals therein. So the perfection of the form of marriage is not about the perfection of individuals, married or otherwise. After all, individuals within monogamous male-female marriage are no more perfect than anyone else. The perfection of the form of marriage also does not mean that it is the only final form. For the singleness of Jesus reveals singleness to be the perfection of another form. But that lies beyond the scope of this essay.
Second, by enabling things to be one thing and not another, the Spirit perfects (or realizes) the particularity of creation (e.g., the particularity of MSDM vis-à-vis polygamy). Therefore, perfecting the particularity of creation contrasts with homogenization, whereby one thing (e.g., same-sex marriage) is treated as the same as another thing (e.g., MSDM). Homogenization characterizes the call for same-sex marriages, although not all advocates of same-sex unions call for those unions to be marriages.
Third, although MSDM is good, it is not good because its final cause is procreation. If marriage required procreation to be good, our understanding of a good (i.e., procreation) might monopolize what we mean by marriage. We might then ask, “Is a childless marriage really a marriage in the fullest sense?” But precisely because MSDM is a mystery received by faith, the form of church and Christ as bride and groom is revealed to be good in itself. So MSDM is good simply because it is sexually differentiated. Therefore, the burden is taken off procreation, which may come as a relief to infertile couples or to couples who do not wish to produce children. But even then, two things follow. One, children are neither accidental to, nor exist solely for, MSDM. On the one hand, children are not accidental because as a material cause of MSDM they remain intrinsically bound up with the goodness of MSDM. That is, if no children became adults then there would be no adults to marry and, therefore, no MSDM. On the other hand, the goodness of children is not intrinsically bound up with MSDM. Rather, the goodness of children is bound up with the imago Dei, which allows for the pathway of celibacy, say. Children do not exist solely for MSDM. Two, infertile MSDMs are not equivalent to same-sex couples, at least not in their resurrection possibilities. Having lost twins at twenty-one weeks’ gestation, I imagine, perhaps not implausibly so, that their resurrection will take place in the womb of my wife. Although marriage will pass away (Matt 22:30) perhaps parenthood will not. And if twenty-one week foetuses, then why not embryos? And if embryos then why not zygotes, gametes, and fertility? Is the healing of MSDM infertility, then, possible at the resurrection? I confess to not knowing the answer. But therein lies the difference. Whereas the possibility can be imagined for MSDM, it cannot be imagined for same-sex couples. For even at the resurrection, same-sex couples could not produce life.Recapitulating, Christ and his church are the reason why Paul (Eph 5:30–32) presents marriage as monogamous and sexually-differentiated. MSDM is not only established because accounts of creation state it but also because Christ and his church are the formal and final causes of those accounts. The final cause not only concerns the perfection (or realization) of the church and genealogy of Jesus but also the perfection (or realization) of the sexually-differentiating formal cause.
This formal cause will be the focus of the next section, before the issue—or scandal—of particularity of MSDM is taken up in the fourth.
3. The Metaphors of Marriage
In the first section, I suggested a Trinitarian reading of Ephesians 5:29–31 whereby “for this reason” (5:30) can be read in terms of efficient, formal, and final causes that correspond to the work of Father, Son, and Spirit. They are three modes of one indivisible work. Marriage is the initiative of the Father, without which marriage would not be possible. Marriage is sexually differentiated because it follows the form of church and Christ as bride and groom. Marriage is perfected by the Spirit for Christ and his church. Whereas the final cause occupied us in the previous section, the formal cause will occupy us in this.
3.1. Metaphor A: Husband and Wife as Christ and Church
Ed Shaw writes that marriage is “a divinely drawn picture that points us to a greater reality, and its constituent parts are not interchangeable as a result. People would, rightly, not consider changing the water in baptism (with all it symbolises) for another liquid.” This, in turn, begs the question of whether it is sinful to baptize in, say, milk. But first another question, What does it mean for marriage to be a “picture that points us to a greater reality”?
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
In Ephesians 5:25–30, Paul argues that a husband should love his wife like Christ loves the church. Verse 31 can then be taken to mean “the reason why man and wife become one flesh is to be like Christ and the church.” Understood solely through metaphor A (husband and wife as Christ and church), marriage is all about illustrating Christ and church. And although metaphor A does connote metaphor B (church and Christ as bride and groom; Rev 21:2), if A (husband and wife as Christ and church) is all Paul is really saying, then B is not essential, because husbands can (and do) love their wives without it. Therefore, if love is all that matters, why should any one picture of marriage—like a monogamous male-female bride and groom—matter so much?
This question is begged by Rowan Williams’s seminal essay on the subject. Williams writes, “the whole story of creation, incarnation, and our incorporation into the fellowship of Christ’s body tells us that God desires us, as if we were God,” and sex embodies this. In sex, being desired elicits desire, and as we become an occasion of joy for the other, our own joy is made complete. The implication is that since such sex need not be sexually differentiated, or be within marriage, or be anything more than a one-night stand, to reflect something of God, sex outside of MSDM need not be prohibited.
But the implication that an epiphany (divine love) justifies its occasion (sex beyond MSDM) is not unproblematic. For what then of Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”? There, a grandmother experiences an epiphany at the hands of a serial killer. The occasion for the epiphany is evidently not justified by the epiphany, as the occasion for the body’s grace is not evidently justified outside MSDM. In neither case does the epiphany self-evidently justify the occasion.
Nonetheless, does metaphor A itself not allow for multiple forms of marriage? How so? Consider “the world is a stage” metaphor. The stage functions as the source of the metaphor, and the world as its target. Whereas altering the source quantitatively alters the metaphor—the world is a war zone—altering the target only qualitatively alters the metaphor—social media is a stage—thereby allowing for multiple targets. So when Paul, in Ephesians 5:29, infers that husbands should love their wives (the target) like Christ loves the church (the source), the target can be altered (to, say, same-sex relations) without quantitatively altering the metaphor. Similarly, curly fries could be the body of Christ, and their qualitative merits as a target debated (vis-à-vis bread).
3.2. Metaphor B: Church and Christ as Bride and Groom
Ortlund notes another reason why man and wife become one flesh. Paul writes that a husband should love his wife like Christ loves the church, “for we are members of his body” (Eph 5:30). And insofar as being “members of his body” connotes B (church and Christ as bride and groom), church and Christ now are the target, and bride and groom the source. Now the source (bride and groom) cannot be altered without also quantitatively altering the truth about the target (church and Christ). For whereas groom-groom conflates church and Christ, bride-bride deflates Christ. Neither captures the reality of bride and groom. So might Paul say about same-sex marriage, “It is not the church and Christ you celebrate”? In itself, this does not preclude same-sex relations. Rather, it means that their grounds must be sought elsewhere.
Moreover, same-sex marriage sets a precedent that is open to question. What if we alter other practices? What are the criteria for altering one thing but not another? Take forgiveness, for example. In the Lord’s Prayer we pray, “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt 6:12). God forgives (target) as we forgive (source). The source (we forgive) cannot be altered without also altering the truth about the target (God forgives). So if we do not forgive, we alter the truth about God. If we do not forgive, those whom we should forgive may not experience God as forgiving through us and so may not experience God as forgiving at all.
On the contrary, the target (church and Christ) deepens our understanding of the source (bride and groom). “That is to say, metaphor can have a revelatory function.” The truth of B (church and Christ as bride and groom), then, not only mediates the efficient cause of marriage. The truth of B (church and Christ as bride and groom) is also the formal cause of marriage, which, together with efficient and final causes, transforms humans into corresponding marriages of brides and grooms. Marriage is essentially a male-female monogamous form.
This is not to deny that same-sex couples can also be transformed. (Indeed, Campbell cites Lonnie Frisbee as an example of a practicing homosexual through whom God was at work, and as a reason to justify that practice.) But it is to deny that same-sex couples can be transformed into one-bride, one-groom relationships. Moreover, by his own logic of ends justifying means, Campbell’s example begs the question, Should Israel embrace Persian gods, since Cyrus is anointed (Isa 45:1–13)? That is, should Israel embrace Persian gods, since God is at work through Cyrus? The difference is that same-sex relations do not reflect the nuptial form of the divine-human covenant, whereas Cyrus does not appear to have entered into that covenant at all.
Reiterating, Christ and the church are the reason why Paul (Eph 5:30–32) presents marriage as monogamous (section 2) and sexually-differentiated (section 3). As such, subsequent sections will address attempts to relativize sexual differentiation, to homogenize it, whether in the incarnation (section 4) or in creation (vis-à-vis the eschaton) (section 5).
The next section also explores the nub of the issue. Is MSDM (which is intrinsic to the bridegroom metaphor) a human projection onto the divine-human relation? Or is MSDM revealed by this metaphor in order to be received by faith?
4. The Particularity of Marriage
Is MSDM revealed by the bridegroom metaphor? More specifically, is the particular sexual differentiation (henceforth PSD) of marriage revealed by the PSD of the bridegroom metaphor? The scandal of particularity, derived from 1 Corinthians 1:23, is instructive. Paul writes that the cross is a stumbling block (το σκάνδαλον) to the Jews. How can a particular man, Jesus, have universal significance? What about those who have never heard? And analogously, what about those for whom MSDM is not an option? In both cases there is a temptation to strip away this particularity, so that Jesus becomes a cipher for some universal principle (like love), or marriage a symbol of something universal (like covenant). But in both cases the temptation can be resisted by leaning into particularity.
As Francis Watson has shown, by charting the significance of the particular days in Genesis 1 for the Gospel accounts, the revelation of divine faithfulness in Christ cannot be abstracted from the particularity of creation. The divine faithfulness, which enables us to trust God for those who have never heard, is revealed precisely through those particulars that constitute the life of Jesus.
Similarly, one might also note the significance of Jesus’s PSD. “Here is the man!” (John 19:5). John 4:1–42 would lose something if this were not so. Because the woman at the well has had six significant relationships (4:18), Jesus makes her seventh. And because of Jesus’s PSD, this makes him the groom. The particularity of marriage is therefore not only analogous to the particularity of Jesus. Marriage is sexually differentiated because Jesus is. Because of Jesus, Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 cannot be deemed relative. Asking, What if Jesus had been a woman? only begs questions like, What if he had been a Gentile? We have no other Jesus than the particular Jesus we have.
This story of the groom is then perfected (or realized) by the Holy Spirit, who is given “as a deposit guaranteeing [the wedding feast] to come” (2 Cor 5:5). Intriguingly, the Greek word for deposit (ὁ ἀρραβών) has since come to mean an engagement ring. So, as the Holy Spirit enables us to receive this particular Jesus by faith, MSDM bears witness to this particularity rather than to a general notion of divine love or covenant in the abstract.
But this gives rise to an objection. Does making sexual differentiation significant make it an idol? The charge is made by a number of scholars. Rogers writes of smuggling in a paradigm, and Cornwall echoes Ward’s argument that Barth’s version of the formal cause argument appeals to natural theology (male and female in creation) rather than to the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Interestingly, the charges of idolatry correlate with understatement surrounding the significance of Jesus as a man. Cornwall wonders whether Jesus might be intersexed. (For the purposes of this essay, I take intersex/DSD to mean a biological mosaic of male and female that is not strictly synonymous with eunuchism.) Cornwall writes that Jesus is assumed to be male “despite the striking absence of what we actually know about his genitals.” But this begs the question, Is an intersexed Jesus a man with a DSD and so a man all the same? For scripture renders Christ as a man (e.g., the groom of John 4:1–42). Or, if Cornwall intends to relativize the male-female binary, Is an intersexed Jesus not a man at all? In that case how coherent is it to argue that an intersexed Jesus of history, reconstructed from scripture, simultaneously deconstructs the very man-rendering scripture from which it derives? Either way, Christ’s perennial presence in the Temple seems to preclude those DSD’s characterized by underdeveloped testes (Luke 2:22–52; Deut 23:1).
Similarly, Rogers argues that the election of Jesus reveals the difference between God and humanity more fundamentally than MSDM does, thereby downplaying the significance of Jesus as a man and his sexual differentiation from a woman. But in what sense might election and intersex themselves be considered a priori, here, and therefore idols? (A priori methodology allows some prior concept to distort the object of faith. It risks reading into Scripture, rather than allowing the truth to be revealed by Scripture.)
Charges of idolatry thus go both ways. These charges continue in the next section, which concerns Campbell’s concept of foundationalism. Campbell argues that the resurrection is beyond sex and gender, thereby implying that the resurrected Jesus is not biologically male and that to say otherwise is to make sex and gender a foundation or idol.
5. The Homogenization of Marriage
Douglas Campbell critiques Paul’s bridegroom metaphor. He writes,
The key difficulty underlying the basic analogy Paul draws here is probably apparent to most of us modern readers attuned to gender-driven anomalies. Paul has structured the relationship between Christ and his church in terms of a male-female binary. Males have been precisely correlated with Christ, and females with the church. And this pairing is clearly inappropriate theologically, once one notices it.
And he continues,
Paul cannot limit participation in Christ to males, or participation in the church to females, as he does momentarily here in Eph 5, and in 1 Cor 11 as well. This makes no sense. The two genders cannot be divided up and distributed neatly into either Christ or the church. These two locations overlap and exist within one another. We are in the church because we are in Christ, and to be in Christ is to be the church. We are all in Christ, and we are all in the church. So Paul is right in what he affirms here—males are in Christ and females are in the church—but wrong in what he fails to affirm and therefore implies—that females are not in Christ and that males are not in the church.
Osiek raises the stakes,
Men certainly do not identify with the church in this metaphor, as members of it, but with Christ, because such identification suits male interests. Herein lies the great danger posed by this ecclesiological metaphor: it encourages men to identify with Christ, women with the church.… I would argue that casting the church as feminine, and above all as bride of Christ, far from enhancing the dignity of women, has in fact done harm to perception of the capacity of women to image the divine, and thus of women’s fundamental human and Christian dignity.
So Pauline binary leads to Pauline patriarchy. Campbell clarifies: Paul instructs wives to obey husbands (5:22, 24); whereas Paul instructs husbands to love wives (5:25, 28).
The binary objection to the bride-groom metaphor, however, and the patriarchal men whom Osiek cites, only target metaphor A (husband and wife as Christ and church). They fail to take into account metaphor B (church and Christ as bride and groom) and the significance of Ephesians 5:30 therein. “Because we are members of his body”—the bride—“… a man will leave his father and mother …” (5:31). It seems Paul fully intends to imply that “husbands are also ‘brides’ in this passage, for they are members of the church, and they too call Christ their savior.” Conversely, the exhortation to “Follow God’s example … and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us” (5:1–2) identifies wives with Jesus (the groom).
Besides, whereas Paul instructs children and slaves to obey (6:1, 5) (ὑπακούω), he omits this verb when instructing wives (5:22), opting for ὑποτάσσω(submit) instead (5:24). And in 5:21, he instructs both husbands and wives to submit to one another. Husbands express submission through love (5:25, 28, 33) and wives through respect (5:33). Campbell silently passes over this mutual submission.
5.1. Foundationalism
But even if the content of Paul’s argument can be defended, the method of that argument remains a target for Campbell, because Campbell charges Paul with foundationalism. By “foundation,” Campbell means “a different foundation for truth from the one that God has laid for us in Jesus, and hence a structure that we ultimately build for ourselves.” Campbell adds in a footnote,
It [metaphor A (husband and wife as Christ and church)] is inappropriate, moreover, because it is an overt act of foundationalism. A “natural” “created” structure has overridden the information we have received from our relationship with Christ about personhood (where we learn that true personhood transcends biological categories), and this is not how Paul usually argues, and certainly not in relation to anything he really seems to care about. If we applied this reasoning to the race binary, we would end up with all pagan converts adopting full Jewish customs! Our movement into the realm of eschatology seems to have been temporarily lost sight of then, although the Corinthian text actually acknowledges this problem when it states that no one is separate in the Lord (1 Cor 11:11).
So whereas creation concerns particulars like male and female, “the new age for which we have always been destined lies beyond sex and gender.” Therefore, because Jesus inaugurates this new age, and because Campbell defines marriage in terms of covenant, Campbell can conclude that “a covenantal account of marriage, which is a relational account of marriage, has no objections to adults of any sexual orientation or gender construction covenanting with one another in marriage.… This is an exemplary Pauline navigation.”
But, and contrary to Campbell, eschatology does not preclude the particulars of creation. Campbell writes of Galatians 3:26–28,
Those who have been immersed and reclothed are something new.… They are “sons of God” like Jesus, the Son of God, and no longer characterized by ethnicity (Jew or Greek/pagan), social status (slave or free), or gender (male or female).
However, and first, much depends on what Campbell means by “no longer characterized.” Rather than erase social distinctions as Campbell does, Galatians 3:28 relativizes them. The point is that such distinctions do not exclude us from the resurrection, not that they no longer apply.
Indeed, some characteristics do not appear to pass away. For, and second, is the resurrected Jesus not Jewish? Does he not speak with a Galilean lilt? And is he not biologically male? Therefore, and contrary to Campbell again, the new age does not lie beyond sex but beyond marriage, because the angels (with whom resurrected bodies are likened) arguably are sexed (Matt 22:30; Luke 20:35). They are sexed if we assume that the sons of God who marry and impregnate women are angels (Gen 6:2–4) and that this lies behind Jesus’s words. Therefore, resurrection bodies are likened to angels because angels marrying is not appropriate, not necessarily because those bodies are not sexed. And so, the most apt anticipation of resurrected bodies is non-sexually-active singleness, not same-sex relations.
Moreover, if the new age does not lie beyond sex and gender, then it is fitting that the metaphor of bride and groom, which connotes the new age, wedding feast and all (Rev 19:7–9), does not lie beyond sex and gender either. And if the metaphor of bride and groom does not lie beyond sex and gender, then neither does marriage.
Finally, Cornwall notes that Paul does not write male or female, following Jew or Greek, slave or free (Gal 3:28). Paul writes male and female. That is, there are still males and females, but there is no longer a male-female binary that excludes intersex/DSD. Therefore, the implied term in Paul’s argument is “‘or not male and female’.” So, if male and female do not pass away, then neither does intersex. Contrary to Campbell’s asexual construct, then, might we become more male, or female, or intersex in the new creation, not less? In the words of C. S. Lewis, might sex become “‘solider”’?
Third, the way in which Campbell frames the terms is therefore open to question. Can Campbell be indicted for a structure that he has ultimately built himself? One of the telltale signs of philosophical foundationalism is a tendency to eschew particulars. For example, Descartes’s cogito is an attempt to eschew particulars from the world in order to discover foundational ideas that are clear and distinct. Here, Campbell attempts to eschew the particulars of sex and gender. He does this by juxtaposing the particulars of creation (male or female) with eschatological personhood (allegedly neither male nor female).
This bears more than a passing resemblance to John Zizioulas, who argues that biological personhood is “transcended” at baptism by ecclesial personhood. So if Campbell’s view is derivative, then it is important to note that although ecclesial personhood transcends biological personhood, for Zizioulas, it does not transcend biological nature. That is, although who we are in Christ (i.e., loved eternally) transcends who we are biologically (i.e., mortal), it does not transcend our bodies. And if it does not transcend our bodies, which are sexed, then it does not fail to transcend sex. So perhaps Campbell’s notion of eschatological personhood—stripped of particular sex, race, etc.—is itself a philosophical fiction—or a “foundation” in Campbell’s own words, a “structure that we ultimately build for ourselves.”
5.2. Recapitulation
Returning to the theme of section three, then, if the nuptial figure is simply an illustration of human marriage A (husband and wife as Christ and church), then marriage is not essentially a covenant between male and female. But if the nuptial figure reveals marriage B (church and Christ as bride and groom), then it not only defines marriage, it also reveals Jesus to be a groom in particular.
6. Closing Reflections
The profound mystery in Ephesians 5:32 is not Christ and the church per se but Christ and the church as the warrant for MSDM. Therefore, insofar as the union of church and Christ connotes the nuptial figure (bride and groom) then
The form and figure of marriage are integrated: the figure of marriage (Christ and the church) delimits the form of marriage (one husband and one wife, bound inseparably) so that there is a true fit between form and figure.
This is the scandal of marriage. But when the particulars of marriage are made arbitrary, its ability to resist (post)modern homogenization is compromised. Homogenization finds it hard to comprehend the particularity of Jesus and so may treat him as a cipher for some universal (like love). Homogenization thereby displaces Jesus as the divine source of inclusivity and diversity. Against this, the scandal of MSDM functions as an apologetic for the scandal of the particularity of Jesus (and vice-versa).
We can now revisit the opening vignette. The “true fit between form and figure” is why the consummation of church and Christ at the end of time (the figure) delimits sex to marriage (the form). Again, when Paul writes that the Holy Spirit is given to us “as a deposit (ὁ ἀρραβών), guaranteeing what is to come” (2 Cor 5:5), ἀρραβώνhas come to mean an engagement ring. And only the church receives this engagement ring, initiating a relationship that is only consummated at the end of time. (Barth similarly observes that the monogamy of marriage follows from the exclusivity of the covenant. Again, the form of the divine-human relation reveals Gen 2:24 perfected.) No wonder then when Perry concludes that consent (for human-human consummation) is best worked out in marriage.
However, since the charge of idolatry (or foundationalism) goes both ways, it is important to keep listening to our interlocutors. It is important to keep checking for logs in our own eyes (Matt 7:3). So, what might we learn? First, Cornwall’s work on intersex helps to put marriage in its place. What makes MSDM idolatrous, however, is not necessarily the appeal to creation, but the way in which marriage is idolized in practice. “The real sin of marriage today is not adultery.… It is the idolatry of the family itself, the refusal to understand marriage as directed toward the Kingdom of God.” So perhaps the very existence of intersexed persons, for whom MSDM is not an option, not only relativizes marriage but also can help to maintain it.
This is because, and second, Williams writes that without those who are celibate and who can be freely devoted to God, we might miss what sex is all about. Celibacy, however, is perhaps best not reduced to vocation, because vocation concerns Christ’s calling us to himself, rather than felt calling to something, whereby if one did not feel called one might not act celibate. Besides, the experience of abusive marriage or unwanted non-sexually-active singleness is more akin to the story of Job than to vocation. Although Job begins with struggle, he ends elsewhere, and as it reaches its denouement, it helps us to learn our responsibility to one another as friends.
So lastly, and insofar as celibacy or non-sexually-active singleness helps to maintain marriage, marriage should help to maintain singleness. Both require the solidarity (or kinship) of the body corporate. This might include nurturing both “vowed” friendships between singles “that transcend … locality and survive … relocation” and godparenting relationships between single adults and children.
7. Summary
A Trinitarian reading of Ephesians 5:31 has been offered. Marriage is good because it is the initiative and gift of the Father. Marriage is perfected by the Spirit for Christ and his church. Marriage is sexually differentiated because it follows the form of church and Christ as bride and groom. So, because the groom is biologically male, MSDM bears witness to this particularity rather than to a general notion of divine love or covenant in the abstract. That is the scandal of marriage.
