Tag Archives: marriage

Edward Taylor, Would God I in that Golden City Were.3

13 Wednesday May 2020

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At this point, the poet continues on with the absurdity which lies at the heart of Christianity: How and why could or would God be joined to us?

I have heard atheist mock Christian belief with the ridiculous thought that God – if there were a God – would concern his Godship with a particular set of beasts roaming around on a small planet around an insignificant star in the midst of an enormous universe.

However, that absurdity is the nature of the Christian claim. One can reject it; but it is silly to think that one has come upon some novel insight. Even before we realized the size of the universe, we were well aware of the ridiculous claim.

Here Taylor presses home the point: it would be more reasonable to believe a king married a flea than to believe God should have dealings with us:

My Maker, he my husband? Oh! Strange joy!
If kings wed worms and monarchs mites we should
Glory spouse shame, a prince a snake or fly
An angel court an ant, all wonder would.
Let such wed worms, snakes, serpents, devils, flies.
Less wonder than the wedding in our eyes.

At this point, it would be useful to take time to consider what is meant by “marriage in this context. It plainly cannot mean an actual human marriage. Rather, marriage is one of the many images which God has given in the world to help us understand what it means for God to love us.

First, it is not the only image: other incompatible images are used such as Father and son or Lord and servant or Creator and creature. There are, for instance, 95 different images used to describe the Church in the New Testament.

To understand this marriage imagery, John Piper helps in his bookSex and the Supremacy of Chirst:

In answering this question let’s remember that knowing someone in the fullest biblical sense is defined by sexual imagery. Genesis 4:1, “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain.” Knowing here refers to sexual intercourse. Or again in Matthew 1:24- 25 we read, “When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.” He “knew her not” means he did not have sexual relations with her.

Now I don’t mean that every time the word know is used in the Bible there are sexual connotations. That’s not true. But what I do mean is that sexual language in the Bible for our covenant relationship to God does lead us to think of knowing God on the analogy of sexual intimacy and ecstasy. I don’t mean that we somehow have sexual relations with God or he with man. That’s a pagan thought. It’s not Christian. But I do mean that the intimacy and ecstasy of sexual relations points to what knowing God is meant to be.

The language of marriage and sex helps as a metaphor to understand God’s love. Since we could not understand God directly, God created metaphors in the world so that could understand God analogically. The metaphor helps to understand the original.

Taylor continues on with this theme of the absurdity of God’s love. The analogy of a King wedding a mite is insufficient. Christ’s love for me makes less sense than a king marrying an ant:

I am to Christ more base, than to a King
A mite, fly, worm, serpent, devil is,
Or can be, being tumbled all in sin,
And shall I be his spouse? How good is this?
It is too good to be declared to be thee.
But not too good to be believed by me.

Human sin makes a human being more unfitting of relation to God than does mud make a worm less fitting to an emperor. And yet this Good News (which is the meaning of Gospel) is not too good to be rejected

The heart of the Gospel is not going to heaven, it is being with God. We are not seeking a place but a friend and more than a friend.

In this stanza, Taylor hits upon the grace of God which first works upon us before we believe and love Him. The Spirit first speaks these words to us before we believe. As it reads in 1 John, we love Christ because he first loved us:

Yet to this wonder, this found in mee,
I am not only base but backward clay,
When Christ doth woo, and till his Spirit be
His spokesman to compel me I deny.
I am so base and forward to him, he
Appear as wonders wonder wedding me.

The poem ends with a prayer that Spirit work upon his heart to make him into the man who can be conformed and fitting to this call:

Seeing, Dear Lord, it’s thus, thy Spirit take
And send thy spokesman to my soul, I pray.
Thy saving grace my wedding garments make:
Thy spouses frame into my soul convey.
I then shall be thy bride espoused by thee
And thou my bridegroom dear espoused shalt be.

Marriage is the beginning and end of the Bible. In the Garden of Eden God performs the first marriage. The eschatological hope of the Church is the marriage party of the Lamb.

Richard Sibbes, Sermons on Canticles 2.3 (Encouragements from the Church’s Marriage Christ)

13 Thursday Jun 2019

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The previous post in this series may be found here.

God has given us the analogy of marriage not merely as some sort of intellectual exercise, but as a means of coming to understand our relationship with God. Sibbes makes four applications, uses, which are to draw from an understanding the marriage between Christ an the church: 

First, Sibbes offers an encouragement to the discouraged. A true saint will be understood not by an apparent perfection, but by a grief for sin. Anyone can appear moral and well-behaved. I imagine the Devil would have impeccable table manners and would offer up the largest gift to charity if it served his purpose. But there is something no Devil can do: repent. When Christian and Pliable are walking along early in Pilgrim’s Progress, they are identical: they both very much desire heaven. The distinction is that Christian feels his sin.

Moreover, a true believer can sin — even sin grievously. 

The true distinction of a believer is a sorrow for sin; it is a sickness which never seems to stay away for long. Even are best moments are marred by sin. 

And coming near to Christ then seems a terror to a stricken conscience. It is to this one that Sibbes makes the first application: 

Use 1. Let us oft think of this nearness between Christ and us, if we have once given our names to him, and not be discouraged for any sin or unworthiness in us. Who sues a wife for debt, when she is married? Uxori lis non intenditur. Therefore answer all accusations thus:—‘Go to Christ.’ If you have anything to say to me, go to my husband. 

He then explains this proposition from a different position. If Christ has paid all for our sin, what is left to be paid? 

God is just, but he will not have his justice twice satisfied, seeing whatsoever is due thereunto is satisfied by Christ our husband. What a comfort is this to a distressed conscience! If sin cannot dismay us, which is the ill of ills and cause of all evil, what other ill can dismay us? 

Sibbes makes another observation from the phrase “a weaker vessel”. This phrase is one of those propositions that seems especially foreign to our culture. But if we consider that the original is with God and the analogy is with us, we can see the purpose of the proposition:

He that exhorts us to bear with the infirmities one of another, and hath enjoined the husband to bear with the wife, as the weaker vessel, 1 Pet. 3:7, will not he bear with his church as the weaker vessel, performing the duty of an husband in all our infirmities?

The second application brings some hope. God does not merely love his weaker wife: he changes her. God does not love us because we are lovely, but he makes us lovely in loving us:

Use 2. Again, his desire is to make her better, and not to cast her away for that which is amiss. And for outward ills, they are but to refine, and make us more conformable to Christ our husband, to fit us for heaven, the same way that he went. They have a blessing in them all, for he takes away all that is hurtful, he pities and keeps us ‘as the apple of his eye,’ Zech. 2:8. Therefore, let us often think of this, since he hath vouchsafed to take us so near to himself. Let us not lose the comfort that this meditation will yield us. We love for goodness, beauty, riches; but Christ loves us to make us so, and then loves us because we are so, in all estates whatsoever.

The third use is to use this grace and goodness of God to draw us off from sin. We are kept from sin by use of means. As contemplate the goodness of this good husband, this perfect God who hates all sin and seeks to rescue us from sin, it transforms us. 

Sibbes makes an interesting observation about human nature:

We are, as we affect;† our affections are, as their objects be. If they be set upon better things than ourselves, they are bettered by it.

We become the thing we love. As our affections are set on a thing, we are changed in the direction of that thing:

For the prime love, when it is rightly bestowed, it orders and regulates all other loves whatsoever.

Our love regulates all else. And so, and only when, our love is rightly set upon God in Jesus Christ is will our life be rightly ordered. We must labor to keep our affections in right order and set upon Christ alone. Only then will our life be rightly ordered:

In other things we lose our love, and the things loved; but here we lose not our love, but this is a perfecting love, which draws us to love that which is better than ourselves. We are, as we affect;† our affections are, as their objects be. If they be set upon better things than ourselves, they are bettered by it. They are never rightly bestowed, but when they are set upon Christ; and upon other things as they answer and stand with the love of Christ. For the prime love, when it is rightly bestowed, it orders and regulates all other loves whatsoever. No man knows how to use earthly things, but a Christian, that hath first pitched his love on Christ. Then seeing all things in him, and in all them, a beam of that love of his, intending happiness to him, so he knows how to use everything in order. Therefore let us keep our communion with Christ, and esteem nothing more than his love, because he esteems nothing more than ours.

We will know if Christ is truly our espoused if we submit our will and desires onto his (and you see how this matches with the sorrow a true believer feels when confronted with his own sin). 

Finally, this knowledge of Christ as husband of the church should bring joy. 

First, consider what a greatness it is to be brought into union with Christ: all things are ours (1 Cor. 3:21-23):

The excellency of this condition to be one with Christ, is, that all things are ours. For he is the King, and the church the Queen of all. All things are serviceable to us. It is a wondrous nearness, to be nearer to Christ, than the angels, who are not his body, but servants that attend upon the church. The bride is nearer to him than the angels, for, ‘he is the head and husband thereof, and not of the angels,’ Heb. 2:16. What an excellent condition is this for poor flesh and blood, that creeps up and down the earth here despised!

Second consider our need for Christ. Sin has created an infinite debt; what would we do without Christ’s provision:

But especially, if we consider the necessity of it. We are all indebted for more than we are worth. To divine justice we owe a debt of obedience, and in want of that we owe a debt of punishment, and we cannot answer one for a thousand. What will become of us if we have not a husband to discharge all our debts, but to be imprisoned for ever?

And let no one think that they have sinned beyond the mercy and grace of God, the merit of Christ’s death:

A person that is a stranger to Christ, though he were an Ahithophel for his brain, a Judas for his profession, a Saul for his place, yet if his sins be set before him, he will be swallowed up of despair, fearing to be shut up eternally under God’s wrath. Therefore, if nothing else move, yet let necessity compel us to take Christ.

Third, knowing the greatness, the goodness, the necessity of receiving from Christ let us be won over by his offer; let us renew our desire and come to him:

Consider not only how suitable and how necessary he is unto us, but what hope there is to have him, whenas he sueth to us by his messengers, and wooeth us, whenas we should rather seek to him; and with other messengers sendeth a privy messenger, his Holy Spirit, to incline our hearts. Let us therefore, as we love our souls, suffer ourselves to be won. But more of this in another place.

Richard Sibbes, Sermons on Canticles, Sermon 2.2 (How to use scriptural analogies)

06 Thursday Jun 2019

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The prior post in this series may be found here.

At this point, Sibbes moves onto the image of the Church as the bride, the spouse. He begins this with a consideration of the Church’s nobility. As the Bride of Christ, the Church is a queen to Christ’s King; the Church is nobility.

At this point, Sibbes makes an important observation when it comes to analogy of heavenly and earthly things. The Scripture everywhere provides us with analogies between our world and heavenly realities. Without analogies, there would be no means for us to understand anything concerning God.

Take the proposition: God is love. If there were no love in human existence, if we lived as animals, reproduction without commitment and affection; then the statement that God loves would utterly incomprehensible. God created a mechanism of human love so that we would have an analogy to understand God’s love.

The problem with analogy, is that we can run the analogy in the wrong direction. A great many errors take place, because we begin with the metaphor — the creation — and then try to force the original to conform and be limited by the metaphor. Thus, Sibbes writes:

Riches, beauty, marriage, nobility, &c., are scarce worthy of their names. These are but titles and empty things. Though our base nature make great matters of them, yet the reality and substance of all these are in heavenly things.

There is some similarity to the Platonic concepts of forms, where an original in the higher realm becomes the basis for what we experience in this realm. While not any sort of Platonic expert, I see a fundamental difference between the Christian understanding of analogy and Plato’s forms. There are aspects of this world which have been created for the purpose of functioning as analogies; however, not everything in this world must be considered an analogy. Moreover, the things in the creation do not pre-exist in some fashion prior to our creation: the relational categories, how God relates to his creation did not exist in practice prior to the creation. Love does pre-exist creation, but love of spouse does not.

Back to the concept of analogy. When considering an analogy between creation and God we must be careful in how we handle the analogy:

True riches are the heavenly graces; true nobility is to be born of God, to be the sister and spouse of Christ; true pleasures are those of the Spirit, which endure for ever, and will stand by us when all outward comforts will vanish.

That mystical union and sweet communion is set down with such variety of expressions, to shew that whatsoever is scattered in the creature severally is in him entirely. He is both a friend and a brother, a head and a husband, to us; therefore he takes the names of all. Whence we may observe further,

How then do we go about understanding the nature of the analogy of marriage. To properly read the analogy, Sibbes takes his cue not directly from his observation of human marriage in 17th century England, but from how the Scripture develops the analogy. He is the matter of the first marriage: a sort of birth of Eve (a sister and a spouse in a fashion:

That the church is the spouse of Christ. It springs out of him; even as Eve taken out of Adam’s rib, so the spouse of Christ was taken out of his side. When it was pierced, the church rose out of his blood and death; for he redeemed it, by satisfying divine justice; we being in such a condition that Christ must redeem us before he would wed us. First, he must be incarnate in our nature before he could be a fit husband; and then, because we were in bondage and captivity, we must be redeemed before he could marry us: ‘he purchased his church with his own blood,’ Acts 20:28. Christ hath right to us, he bought us dearly.

Next, he considers the matter of consent in marriage: this is what I will do. This is important aspect of Augustinian theology where faith is preceded by the work of the Spirit. Faith is true faith, but it is wrought faith. Our consent to the marriage is true consent, but it is Spirit-wrought consent:

Again, another foundation of this marriage between Christ and us, is consent. He works us by his Spirit to yield to him. There must be consent on our part, which is not in us by nature, but wrought by his Spirit, &c. We yield to take him upon his own terms; that is, that we shall leave our father’s house, all our former carnal acquaintance, when he hath wrought our consent. Then the marriage between him and us is struck up.

Sibbes then notes some additional elements of comparison: the wife takes the husband name — the Church is called by the name of Christ. The Church comes with her debt, which is paid by the husband. Moreover, the husband conveys to the spouse all of his wealth and honor. Third, there are friends of the bride who extol the beauty and desirability of the husband (Christ).

Sibbes makes an interesting observation from a provision in the Law: Deuteronomy 21:12 (AV), “Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails”. A woman who was brought in as a wife from a foreign nature conquered by Israel would be married, but before she comes in there is a cutting off of her former life:

Before she should be taken into the church, there must be an alteration; so before the church, which is not heathenish, but indeed hellish by nature, and led by the spirit of the world, be fit to be the spouse of Christ, there must be an alteration and a change of nature, Is. 11:6–8; John 3:3. Christ must alter, renew, purge, and fit us for himself. The apostle saith, Eph. 5:24, it was the end of his death, not only to take us to heaven, but to sanctify us on earth, and prepare us that we might be fit spouses for himself.

Richard Sibbes, Sermons on Canticles 1.8 (Christ loves his bride, and so makes her lovely)

14 Tuesday May 2019

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Having completed his consideration of Canticles 4:16, Awake, O North wind he comes to answer:

Now, upon the church’s invitation for Christ to come into his garden, follows his gracious answer unto the church’s desire, in the first verse of this fifth chapter:

‘I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved,’ Cant. 5:1.

Having made some introductory observations, Sibbes comes to his exegesis

The first point is that Christ comes into this garden. Although Sibbes does not directly address this point, he seems to have this concept in mind: What would God have to do with sinful men? As it reads in Psalm 5:4 (AV), “For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee.”

God loves his Church and then makes it lovely:

First of all, God makes his church lovely, planteth good things therein, and then stirs up in her good desires: both fitness to pray from an inward gracious disposition, and holy desires; after which, Christ hearing the voice of his own Spirit in her, and regarding his own preparations, he answers them graciously. Whence, in the first place, we may observe, that,

God makes us good, stirs up holy desires in us, and then answers the desires of his holy Spirit in us.

This is paralleled in Paul’s discussion of marriage in Ephesians 5:25-27:

25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

The love of Christ does not leave as we were, but the relentless action of the Holy Spirit works upon us to make more lovely to Christ. Because have been redeemed we are transformed; because of his love, we are made lovely. 

This incidentally, is the place upon which the Protestant and the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox differ, this matter of justification and sanctification. And while this subject is far too great to be handled in three sentences, there is a picture here of the distinction. As Thomas Brooks said, you are wise and know how to apply it.

This transformation of the heart worked by the love of God helps us to understand a wildly misapplied verse :

Psalm 37:4 (AV)

Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

If I delight myself in the Lord, then he is the desire of my heart. God stirs us up to the best desire and then meets that desire. 

But Sibbes takes the application in a different direction and considers the question of prayer:

A notable place for this we have, Ps. 10:17, which shews how God first prepares the heart to pray, and then hears these desires of the soul stirred up by his own Spirit, ‘Lord, thou hast heard the desires of the humble.’ None are fit to pray but the humble, such as discern their own wants: ‘Thou wilt prepare their hearts, thou wilt make thine ear to hear.’ So Rom. 8:26, it is said, ‘Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us, with groanings which cannot be uttered.’ Thus the Spirit not only stirs up our heart to pray, but also prepares our hearts unto it. 

God must work in our hearts to prepare and deliver our prayer, because we would not have such in ourselves. 

Sibbes then turns to the matter of why God hearing our prayers. But since that is a topic onto itself, it will come next.

Kierkegaard: Freedom of Choice in Either/Or

20 Tuesday Feb 2018

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Volume 2 of Either/Or is composed of two long, often tedious [the first letter, “Aesthetic Validity of Marriage” can be particularly slow, repetitious, dull], meandering, letters from Judge Vilhelm to man of volume 1 (which includes the famous Diary of a Seducer).  A primary aspect of this volume is to convince the seducer of the primacy of marriage (over a life of well… seduction).  He argues that one should choose to be ethical.

There is an aspect of irony in all this, because Kierkegaard is arguing to Regina Olson (as has been noted by many) about marriage after he had broken off his engagement to the young lady.

He argues that marriage is no duty — because it is a duty of love, which is something thus done willingly (and then as he makes this argument, he seems to almost contradict himself).  Thus, the ethical choice is one of freedom. By way of contrast, the one who lives merely for pleasure has no freedom, because he has made no choice — he has no ability to even reflect upon anything.

I have received second-hand or so some ideas of Kierkegaard and existential choice: an act whereby one chooses in some manner and thus secures some sort of meaning in life. Now, I am not an expert in the history of existential philosophy, nor have I traced all the movements in the area from Kierkegaard through Sartre and Jasper. But what I have seen — and this is perhaps the fountainhead of the concept is this section from Equilibrium in volume two of Either/Or:

That which is prominent in my either/or is the ethical. It is therefore not yet a question of the choice of something in particular, it is not a question of the reality of the thing chosen, but of the reality of the act of choice….As an heir, even though he were heir to the treasure of all the world, nevertheless does not posses his property before he had come of age [an allusion to Galatians 4:1-2], so even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when has chosen himself; for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone can be if he wills it.

He then goes on to explain that the aesthetic man is one not merely lives for pleasure, but one who lives immediately, without an act of choice, “the aesthetically in a man is that by which he is immediately what he is; the ethical is that whereby he becomes what he becomes.”

But because the aesthetically man is merely what he is — not having chosen something else — is “enmeshed”. He has “no time to tear [him]self loose.” This is in contrast to the ethical man (the writer of volume 2), “I am not enmeshed, either by my judgment of the aesthetical or by my judgment of the ethical; for in the ethical I am raised above the instant — I am in freedom — but it is a contradiction that one might be enmeshed by being in freedom.”

The act of choosing, ‘imparts to man’s nature a solemnity, a quiet dignity, which is never entirely lost.”

The man who merely wants to enjoy life finds himself at the mercy of “a condition which either lies outside the individual or is in the individual in such a way that it is not posited by the individual himself.” For in the inside, he gives the example of a young girl “who for a brief time prides herself upon her beauty, but soon it deceives her.”

For the man who lives constantly for some pleasure outside himself, he gives Nero as the example — nothing is able to sate him, “all the world’s cleverness must devise for him new pleasures, for only in the instant of pleasure does he find response, and when that is past he gasps with faintness.” [His discussion of Nero is particularly interesting.]

But something still troubles Nero, he cannot “break through.” He has a place which terrifies anyone who sees it – he cannot bear for anyone to look into his eyes. “He does not possess himself; only when the world trembles before him is he tranquilized, for then there is no one who ventures to lay hold on him. Hence this dread of men which Nero shares with everyone personality of this sort.”

This seems to match the diary of the seducer, who works out the desire for the woman — but cannot permit her to actually be with him — he cannot make the ethical move to marry (marriage is the constant background of volume 2).

“At least we can both learn that a man’s unhappiness is never due to the fact that he has not the outward conditions in his power this being the very thing which would make him unhappy.” — This leads to melancholy:  “But melancholy is sin, really it is a sin instar omnium, for not to will deeply and sincerely is sin, and this is the mother of all sins.”

(It continues on through many twists in turns on the nature of despair for the aesthetic man. Later, in Equilibrium, he writes, “For no intoxication is so beautiful as despair, so becoming, so attractive, especially in a maiden’s eyes (that you know full well), and especially if one possess the skill to repress the wildest outbursts, to let despair be vaguely sensed like a distant conflagration, while only a glimpse of it is visible outwardly.”)

On the other hand is the ethical choice which willing embraces duty: it is here that marriage as the basis of the argument makes sense. He is not merely telling the young man to stop being a cad, grow up and get married — he is explaining that choosing a duty to love another is not a burden but an act of love. To choose to love is an imposed duty, but it is not burden because love is the expression and obtaining of desire: “If I attach my  closely in friendship to another person, love is everything in this case, I recognize no duty; if love it is at an end, then friendship is over. It is reserved for marriage alone to base itself upon such an absurdity.” [Here is an example of the maddening paradox of this essay — it is long, twisting and the author never seems to be completely clear even to himself. He makes a point and then argues out another way.]

A historical irony lies here: if this is indeed the basis for the idea of the existential choice of which I heard and read in 20th century philosophers (and their cheaper imitators), then that choice was originally a choice offered by a moralizing older man (a judge no less), to a younger, carefree man to get married!

Why Eve was Made From Adam’s Rib

18 Tuesday Jul 2017

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Theophilus gives two reasons: Theological, to prove that Adam and Eve were not created by different gods. Anthropological: increase their affection:

And Adam having been cast out of Paradise, in this condition knew Eve his wife, whom God had formed into a wife for him out of his rib. And this He did, not as if He were unable to make his wife separately, but God foreknew that man would call upon a number of gods. And having this prescience, and knowing that through the serpent error would introduce a number of gods which had no existence,—for there being but one God, even then error was striving to disseminate a multitude of gods, saying, “Ye shall be as gods; ”—lest, then, it should be supposed that one God made the man and another the woman, therefore He made them both; and God made the woman together with the man, not only that thus the mystery of God’s sole government might be exhibited, but also that their mutual affection might be greater.

Theophilus of Antioch, “Theophilus to Autolycus,” in Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire), ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. Marcus Dods, vol. 2, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 105.

Edward Tailor, Would God I in that Golden City Were

26 Sunday Feb 2017

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The prior post on this poem may be found here.

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I know not how to speak’t, it so so good:
Shall mortal and immortal marry? nay
Man marry God? God be a match for mud?
The King of Glory to wed a worm? Mere Clay?
This is the case. The wonder too in bliss.
Thy Maker is thy husband. Hearst thou this?

My maker, he my husband? Oh! strange joy!
If kings wed worms, and monarch mites wed should,
Glory spouse shame, a prince a snake or fly
An angel court an ant, all wonder would.
Let such web worms, snake serpents, devils, flies.
Less wonder than the wedden in our eyes.

Paraphrase: The poet struggles for a comparison which could match the wonder he discovers in heaven: God loves human beings. In fact, the degree of intimacy is so profound that it can only be understood as a marriage.

Reference: These two stanzas introduce an idea which lies at the heart of Christian eschatology and the biblical narrative: the figure of the marriage between God and his people.

The primary reference here is to Isaiah 54:5. The entire passage reads as follows:

Isaiah 54:4–8 (AV)

4 Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more. 5 For thy Maker is thine husband; the LORD of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called.
6 For the LORD hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God. 7 For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. 8 In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy Redeemer.

The concept here is that the degree of love God has for his people is figured in the love which a husband has for his wife. The idea is not there is any actual merger of God and humanity, but rather that marriage is an illustration to make plain the nature of God’s love for his own:

Understanding this explains a great of Christian conduct and language which may seem baffling to non-Christians. Notice how Paul weaves human marriage with the theology:

Ephesians 5:25–33 (AV)

25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. 28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. 29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: 30 For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. 31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. 32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.
It is for this reason that Christians cannot reduce marriage to a personal contract: it is a means given to us to begin to learn what it is to be in relationship with God.

It is this degree of intimacy (an idealized marriage) which amazes the poet.

Moreover, the culmination of Christian hope is to be called to “the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:9).

Meter:
This line helps to underscore the stark wonder of the poet:

MAN MARry GOD? GOD be a MATCH for MUD?

The accent on the first syllable “MAN” requires one to slow down and pay attention. The back-and-back accents on the word “GOD” pivots the line into directions creating a chiasmus: Man God God Man.

A similar move happens here: Glory spouse shame, a prince a snake or fly, with the accent falling on three consecutive syllables GLORY SPOUSE SHAME.

Kierkegaard, “The Rotation Method” Part 4 (Either/Or)

11 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Kierkegaard, Philosophy, Psychology, Theology of Biblical Counseling, Uncategorized

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The remainder of the essay is how to engage in the “rotation method”: how to live in this world without becoming bored. First, there is the matter of what boredom is. Some just acquire boredom, but he spends more concern about boredom as “the result of a mistake effort to find diversion.”

He then makes this fascinating observation:

Boredom depends on the nothingness which pervades reality; it causes a dizziness like that produced by looking down into a yawning chasm, and this dizziness is absolute.

There is a pointlessness to existence. There is a grinding similarity. The endless emptiness produces boredom.

When I read that I think, Jesus could have not been bored. We see how people seek to invest trivial things which great importance (think of entertainers who often do little else than divert us).

The solution to this endlessly pointless world is treat the world even more pointlessness. I cannot help but read this and think of Oscar Wilde and “all art is useless.” To avoid the endless similarity of existence, we need diversion.

But, to obtain diversion we need two things (1) forgetfulness, and (2) a lack of commitment to anything.

He calls forgetfulness “an art”. It’s first element is how one remembers. We must experience an event as an experience, it is never quite clear, but there cannot be no more or spiritual reflection. An event exists merely as an experience to be enjoyed: “Enjoying an experience to its full intensity to the last minute will make it impossible either to remember or to forget.”

Forgetfulness is more than simply not being able to recall some detail, it is to not be bound by any event. Hence, “”Nature is great because it has forgotten that it was a chaos; but this thought is subject to revival at anytime.”

Hence forgetfulness permits one to obtain “freedom”:

The art of remembering and forgetting will also insure against sticking fast in some relationship of life, and make possible the realization of complete freedom.

Hence one must avoid friendship (“The essential thing is to never stick fast, and for this it is necessary to have oblivion back of one.”), marriage  (“Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.”), official positions.

This of course is a position which has risen to a level of moral permission, even obligation in the contemporary world. Appropriate psychological counsel for one in an unhappy marriage is often to not be bound by custom and tradition, but rather to “forget” vows, obligations and constriction and seek happiness.

I recently saw the truly wonderful movie Fences (it is well worth your time to watch). In that movie, the main character “forgets” his marriage because he desires some happiness from what this essayist would call boredom. But unlike our unattached essayist created by Kierkegaard, the character in Fences brings much suffering upon himself and others (interesting, I imagine this essayist would find that an acceptable cost because at least misery is not necessarily boring).

One must be “arbitrary”: “You go to see the middle of a play, you read the third part of a book….Arbitrariness in oneself corresponds to the accidental in the external world.” This reminds me of Cage’s attempt to make accidental music.

 

Marriage and Religion

12 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by in Culture, Uncategorized

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Hugh MacMillian, in his sermons (1882), The Marriage in Cana of Galilee, makes the following observation about the relationship between religion and changing marriage. I found it interesting in light of the West’s current work of fundamentally restructuring marriage in ways even more dramatic that the bigamy or forced celibacy condemned here. Macmillan would tie the change in marriage to “religious enthusiasm” — which is certainly the case in the West (and the fact that this new religion merely considers itself natural, common sense, not a religion does nothing to alter its fundamentally religious nature):

Marriage is the best and simplest test by which a religious sect or community can be tried. According as ti conforms or fails to conform to the Divine law in this primary relation of life, so ought it to stand or fall in the estimation of the world. It is a remarkable circumstance that every religious enthusiast who facing that he is inspired to proclaim a new faith, whenever he succeeds in impressing his convictions upon others, begins to tamper with marriage. The Mohammedanism of the East, the Mormonism of the West, proclaim themselves systems of imposture by their abuse of this all-important relation. The spiritual-wife communities which have sprung out of religious excitement and revivalism of America are based upon radical errors, and are as injurious to human nature as they are false to God. On the side of sensualism or on the side of asceticism, every false religion is sure to err fatally. Nature uniformly revenues the outrage upon her law in every case.

Pages 22-23

Plutarch’s Marriage Advice, Section 48: The End

16 Monday Jun 2014

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This is the final section of Plutarch’s Marriage Advice. The previous post in this series may be found here: https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2014/06/12/plutarchs-marriage-advice-section-47-battles/

Section 48:

Eurydice, when it comes to love for decorations, I implore you to read and remember what Aristylla wrote by Timoxena.

Pollianus, don’t dare suppose that your wife will leave off with needless luxuries unless she should see you despising these things in others; this will be especially the case if you are seen rejoicing in gold-covered cups and wall murals and trappings for mules or necklaces for horses.

No, she won’t reject excess in her rooms if she sees that excess has taken over your rooms.

You have already demonstrated that you are  prepared to engage with philosophy, so adorn your character by receiving and considering profitable ideas.  Like a honeybee, look everywhere and bring to your wife whatever would be useful.  Show her the best things and explain them to her in such a way a will be pleasing and understandable.

A father you are to her, and a dear mother

Even a brother

It does not lessen your dignity for your wife to say

A husband

You, now are to me

a guide, philosopher, teacher of the best and divine.

 When women learn such things first, they will reject the needless. A wife would be ashamed to be a dancer when she has learned geometry. She won’t buy into magic spells made from the words of Plato or Xenophon.

When she hears someone promise to bring down the moon, she’ll laugh at the ignorance and silliness of such stories which have tricked so many other women: she not unwillingly learned astronomy – and knows about Aglaonice the daughter of Hegetor of Thessaly, who had thorough knowledge of eclipses and everything concerning the moon and knew before the time in which moon would be caught in the earth’s shadow, deceived and took-in all the women with the idea that she herself pulled down the moon.

Now they say that no woman ever conceived a child without the cooperation of a man, yet there are deformed embryos, fleshy and solid which spring from corruption: these are called “moles”.  Thus, care should be taken to guard against this happening with women’s minds. For if they do not receive the seed of useful words and do not undertake education with their husband, but rather are left to themselves, they will end up with rotten ideas and pathetic conceits.

Yet, you, Eurydice, I sincerely urge to be conversant with the saying of the wise and the good—that voice always have ready, which you have known since you a young girl with us. This will bring joy to your husband and the respect of other women, since you will be adorned with that which is precious and respectable—and nothing else.

For you will not get the expensive pearls of that woman or the rare rubies of another unless you pay the exacting price.  But the adornments of Theano, Cleobulina, Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas, Timocleia, the sister of Theagenes, Claudia of old, Cornelia, daughter of Scipio, as many as have become admired and acclaimed, these things are rightfully laid about as a gift, adorning them gloriously in both life and happiess.

For if Sappho thought well of her of elegantly written verses for a certain rich woman:

Death, you lie there; no memory of you

There shall be: for you do not share in the roses

From Piera

Why then should you not allow yourself to think great-brilliant thoughts of yourself? For you do not only share in the roses but even share the fruits the Muses graciously bear to those who wonder at education and philosophy.

Greek Text and Notes

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