Red Pen Logic On Marriage

For the record, I think Tim Barnett is a stand-up dude with a generally winsome attitude who does a pretty good job with the tools at his disposal.  However, he needs a tune-up here and there, & this is one of those instances.   (Additionally, what follows is not an endorsement of polygamy). 

Stop reading now, please & watch Tim’s presentation.

Now that you’ve heard him, please consider the following….

By way of reply, where is there an imperative statement in Genesis 2:24?  

What we have here are two descriptive statements: 

1: What God did with respect to Adam & Eve :  

And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.”

2: What was happening among Genesis’ receiving audience:

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Tim seems to think that because “Therefore” is present, what follows is a command.   It clearly isn’t.  It’s simply a statement that because God did this in the Garden, we, the People, are following that pattern.    

The text doesn’t take the form of a command.  In Genesis an imperative takes the form of a command — not an explanation of the rationale for the status quo among the practices of the people. 

The prescriptive statement is found earlier — in the command to be fruitful & multiply and exercise dominion.   

He seems to be arguing that because God matrionied Adam & Eve & because men are representationally in Adam and women are in Eve, God is expressing His moral will via His decretal will.   That’s a category error.   

That’s very like arguing that because God created males & females we can deduce moral precepts about human sexuality by using our own image as an authoritative epistemic warrant.   The Bible precludes such thought processes in Romans 1. 

The created order’s purpose is to testify to God’s existence, attributes, & authority (Romans 1:20). Any use of the created order (God’s decretal will) is, at best, an iffy process, insofar as the purpose of the created order is to testify to God’s authoritative image for our ethics & not our own or that of any other created being.

1- Genesis 2:24 is descriptive in the sense that it refers to the creation of Adam & Eve  and God’s covenantal uniting them.   It is also **descriptive** not **prescriptive** insofar as it describes the rationale behind the matrimonial union between bridegroom & bride as a matter of the civil & social order in Israel.    Whether or not Adam & Eve had biological parents is irrelevant to the nature of the statement. 

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Gen. 2:24)

What we have here is a statement to the audience that works like aside in a play.   The author pauses the narrative for a moment in order to connect the common practice of the people to the Garden narrative.   That’s not a command, it’s a description of the practice of the people connected to the events in the Garden.  

2- Genesis does not directly command any individual to marry.   Neither does it state that marriage is reserved for one male & one female as if polygamy / polyandry is a sin regardless of the motives of the moral agents involved.  How so? 

3- Apropos 2, if polygamy is a sin regardless of the motives of the moral agents, then that means that God judges people based on the number of concomitant spouses to whom they are married & not whether or not they themselves love God first & foremost & exhaustively and perfectly and their neighbors before themselves & exhaustively & perfectly.  

What is a sin?  According to Matthew 22, the First Table of the Law is summarized as “Love God first & foremost & exhaustively & perfectly.  The 2nd Table of the Law is summarized as the same general quality of love for others before yourself & after God.  All else hangs on these 2 principles. 

Romans 13 teaches us that perfect love fulfills the Law.  I John 4 teaches us that perfect love conquers guilt related fear in the Judgment.  

Sin isn’t the failure to marry only one spouse at a time, as if guilt is determined by the number of people to whom one person is married at the same time.  It’s a matter of a moral agent’s internal volitional mechanism — the priority of their love for God & others before themselves & how exhaustive & perfect that love is.   

The Bible teaches that God judges the heart, not appearances (1 Samuel 16, Jeremiah 17).   It also informs us that we form & follow desires (motives), and these motives lead us into sin, condemnation, & death.   Matthew 5 draws attention to our motives as the source of our thoughts, words, & deeds, even defining sexual immorality in general as that which is underwritten by lustful intent & adultery as a species of sexual immorality via lustful intent directed at someone who is not your spouse.   There is no such thing as a thought, word, or deed that is a sin based on some sort of external factor or set of factors regardless of our internal volitional mechanism.  

Matthew 19, by Tim’s own admission, involves an answer to a question about divorce.   The question is not about whether or not marriage is a heterosexuals only affair or whether or not God judges polygamists to be sinners based on the number of wives they have rather than the workings of their inner volitional mechanisms.  

Matthew 19 also models sound reasoning skills for us.   Yeshua refers to the decretal order for God’s intention that matriomony is a covenantal union in which He Himself unites those involved.    He then alludes to God’s moral will in Deuteronomy, Malachi, & texts like Jeremiah that address the reasons for divorce.    He isn’t using God’s decretal will as a roadmap to God’s moral will.  

Where is the imperative in Matthew 19 that states marriage is one man, one woman & and any deviation from that pattern is a sin regardless of motive? Nowhere.

May God bless us all, each & every one, and “Go & sin no more.”