Tackling Tradition 71: Be Fruitful & Multiply

There those in the TN legislature who believe that the nuclear family consists of one (heterosexual) husband & one (heterosexual) wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children & is God's design for familial structure and has been the bedrock of society since the creation of the world.

That’s quite the assertion.   What does the Bible say? 

From Genesis: 

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27  So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.  (Genesis 1:26–31, ESV)

The Bible teaches that we are all created in God’s image (Genesis) & that the purpose of the created order is to testify to God’s invisible attributes & authority. 

It also indicts us for suppressing the truth about God’s existence, attributes, & authority with respect to theology, philosophy, & ethics & instead appealing to the attributes of people, animals, &tc. as the basis of worship, worship ethics, sexual ethics, & justice ethics in general. 

The only road to heteronormativity as “the” only God approved sexual ethic, runs through substituting God’s attributes & authority with that which is drawn from the created order, by way of interpreting “natural” in Romans 1:18 - 32 as a license to use the (alleged) heteronormativity of the human &/or one or more other created images as the basis of ethical reasoning with respect to sexual ethics —- which is the very thinking process the text forbids. 

Consequently, the Bible doesn’t not teach universal heteronormative sexual ethics.  Rather it prohibits sexual ethics that are not properly warranted by way of looking to God’s invisible attributes (none of which are sexual in nature).  God is sui generis & has no sexual characteristics/attributes.  Therefore, “natural” can’t mean “heteronormative” & “unnatural” cannot mean “homosexual.”

Therefore, being fruitful & multiplying, does not entail universal moral heteronormativity.  Since the Bible teaches that  being fruitful & multiplying doesn’t entail heteronormativity, the definition of “ nuclear family” is not, & never had been,  confined to one (heterosexual) husband & one (heterosexual) wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children. 

Marriage is a covenantal relationship according to Genesis 1 & Matthew 19.  The moral law of God is covenantal, therefore, it is individual/familial, ecclesiastical, & civil.    That said, God’s moral law doesn’t require people to marry or else die in sin.  Rather, it lays out the rationale for marriage in general terms just as it dies for Purim in Esther.  

Esther informs that the Jews in exile decided to observe Purim as a high holy day, but it doesn’t command the people to observe it.    Likewise, we see Yeshua at the Festival of Lights in John, which is another liturgical holiday, Its roots are in the Intertestamental period.    Yeshua attended it, but there is no universal command to observe (or ignore it) or else die in sin.   

Yeshua taught that man is made to administer & observe Sabbath regulations.  Liturgical activities can be expanded or contracted as to their concrete particulars but as to not their general principles.  In other words marriage is a legal, covenantal ordinance that is prophetic & ecclesiastical — not merely civil.   It’s a Sabbatical & sacramental activity & thus serves an ongoing liturgical function.  

The exercise of dominion is a general principle.   What sort of marriage (heterosexual or homosexual; childbearing or not; adoption or not, IVF/surrogacy or not) is a concrete particular.  Unlike general principles,  concrete particulars can be expanded & contracted as long as these expansions or contractions don’t violate the general particulars.  

Question:   Where does the Bible defines a family as “one (heterosexual) husband & one (heterosexual) wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children?”

Answer:   Nowhere.   If the command to exercise dominion requires heteronormativity & defines family in heteronormative terms & requires children to be a family, then you wind up with infertile couples not being rightly called families, because a family is like a church. 

A church without elders is still a church if there a people gathered in God’s name insofar as the LORD is there Sabbath.  The  LORD paracletes them until they spirate elders & deacons from among them.  The same is true of married people who have no biological &/or adopted offspring. 

In addition, if the command to be fruitful & multiply requires no childlessness, then that means infertile people in particular (not just homosexuals) & married people in general are in sin based on their biogenetics or because of an accident/injury.    

That’s not how God defines sin & righteousness.  

Righteousness is defined as comprehensive, meticulous,exhaustive, perfect love for God first, then everyone & everything else, & only then yourself.  

What makes any thought, word, or deed worthy of God’s condemnation? The bare act apart from the motive or the motive that underwrites the act? 

1 Samuel 16:7 : 1 Samuel 16:7 (ESV):  For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” 

Jeremiah 17:10 (ESV): I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways,  according to the fruit of his deeds.” 

Matthew 5:28 (ESV): 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 

Answer: The desires that underwrite motives which move us to act determines what is a sin.  God judges us accordingly.  The bare act is not a sin. If so, then you wind up with God condemning & commending w/o regard to motive, which ultimately means it’s possible to work your way into God’s favor & its possible to fall under His wrath apart from motive. That’s a gospel of works righteousness. 

How so?  Simply put, if God condemns & commends our thoughts, words, & deeds apart from our motives, then that means that the legalistic point of view prevails, insofar as if David Q. Baker is in sin (the sin of collaborating with the Enemy) based on the identity of his clients & the meaning of the cake, then his motives really don’t matter.  Why? Because the grounds of his condemnation by God and the consternation of Man has very little if anything to do with his motives.  He’s condemned based on external appearances & non-volitional factors (his clients’ identity & the meaning of the cake). 

If God condemns us regardless of our motives, then He commends us the same way.   As long as we accomplish the requisite amount of spiritual rigamorole, we are in God’s favor, contrary to Scripture, which talks about the vanity of offerings, feasts, & ceremonies in which the people were just going through the motions, & the Sanhedrin were trumpeting their gifts in public & are called hypocrites.  

In both Jeremiah & Ezekiel, Israel is indicted as a faithless, adulterous wife.  What makes for adultery? The failure to love God & neighbor which places the moral agent (the adulterer) above everyone else, thus suppressing God’s existence, attributes, & authority with one’s own (Romans 1:18 - 23).

The Bible teaches that we form & follow our own desires, & these desires serve as our motivation. We love “Who, what, when, where, how, & why,” & if the sum total is in any way, shape, or form & to any degree less than perfect love for God & neighbor, then we have sinned.  

Herein is the Chain of Sin, Death, & Condemnation : 

James 1:13–15 (ESV): Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. 

What TN is doing constitutes an open & notorious act that ignores what the Bible actually teaches about human sexuality in particular & marriage and family in particular.    The Bible teaches the 3fold use of the Law & Gospel & that marriage is rooted in the Covenant of Grace itself, an institution imposed upon us as individ s & corporately that has a ecclesiastical dimension, not merely a civil dimension. 

The Bible neither ordains nor establishes the nuclear family as a heteronormative social structure (that requires children), & it flatly condemns exclusively heteronormative sexual ethics, insofar as the Bible calls looking to the created order itself as an epistemic template an exercise in futility.  

Moreover, their own State Constitution condemns this ignorant & bigoted resolution. 

TN Declaration of Rights 

That all men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience; that no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect, or

support any place of worship, or to maintain any minister against his consent; that no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience; and that no

preference shall ever be given, by law, to any religious establishment or mode of worship.

Marriage is a covenantal union that, whether or not people realize it, has a prophetic, ecclesiastical basis, as well as a civil basis.    If you are going to look to the prelapsarian estate of Adam & Eve for your sexual ethics & your ideas about marriage & family, then you need to understand that Adam & Eve (who are our universal federal representatives in this matter & many others) were created by God & placed in a covenantal union by Him & that they were also ordained as individuals & as a unit as a pair of priests charged with the administration & observance of ecclesiastical dominion as well as non-ecclesiastical dominion. 

The TN resolution is ill-conceived.   Are married couples without children nuclear families?  Of course they are, just as Adam & Eve were (& still are).   In addition, the good Christian people who wrote it  &/or voted for it have now trampled upon the ecclesiastical use of the Law & Gospel in general & interfered with the religious/quasi-religious rights of the People —- all because, like all self-reinforcingly ignorant religious & quasi-religious bigots, they are looking to the allegedly heteronormative state of the created order’s VISIBLE attributes instead of to God Almighty’s INVISIBLE attributes in order to do ethical reasoning & liturgical philosophy. 

O LORD, Hear our prayer(s)!