If you would like a review copy of the print version of my new book:

Tim Bulkeley, Not Only a Father: Talk of God as Mother in the Bible & Christian Tradition (Signs) Auckland: Archer Press, 2011 ISBN: 978-1468091373

Please contact me, please say both where you expect to publish the review (blogs are quite acceptable though a full review rather than a short note would be good) and when you are expect to write it. There are no conditions and you should be as critical as you normally would.

From a webpage titled: History of Winnie the Pooh

Gavin (at Otagosh) posted a fairly long response to my piece Biblical marriages. Since he took the trouble to reply at some length as a post, I’ll do the same.

His critique starts

Then Tim makes an amazing statement: “In terms of the teaching of Scripture it is clear that Gen 2 is a privileged text (Jesus and Paul both cite it when discussing marriage).”

Genesis 2 is a privileged text?  In what sense?  Both Jesus and Paul cite other texts too.  Or, to be more specific, Paul and the Gospel writers cite other texts.¹

Well, yes, evidently both Jesus and Paul² also refer to other parts of Scripture. A full treatment of what the Bible says about marriage would need to treat them and yet other texts (that neither of these use) also. But still it seems to me, for a Christian reading of Scripture the fact that both Jesus and Paul (more than once) cite Gen 2 does make that passage a somewhat privileged locus for seeking a biblical understanding of marriage.³ No, Gavin, I cannot accept that all texts, or passages, are equal. Like most people⁴ I have a “canon within the canon, though it will be different for different purposes and I think that (as I began to here)⁵

From a webpage titled: History of Winnie the Pooh

Gavin continued:

There were no “red letter” options available to indicate Jesus’ actual words, quotation marks had yet to be invented, and speaking of “invented”, much (please note that I’m not saying all) of the material attributed to Jesus has clearly been put into his mouth.

This seems to assume that when I say “Jesus” my interest is historical. There is a terrible tendency in modern thought to value history and “facts”. But I am not a historian, I am a theologian, my primary interest is not in reconstructing a plausible history but in the character “Jesus” who inspires and is the centre of the New Testament. This Jesus whether or not “invented”⁶ does make special use of this passage.

This section of the post concludes:

Tim’s decision to anoint Genesis two as “privileged” is entired [sic]⁷ theological and subjective.

I hope that I have shown that the first is entirely true, but perhaps to be expected of a theologian, and that the second is true only in the most general sense. I gave a reason that Gavin did not like, and in a short post failed to present any of the others, perhaps I have begun to rectify that lack above.

Gavin then quotes something I wrote and rejects it. I wrote:

“in this (as in everything else) human sinfulness warps and twists God’s intent. All of the ‘biblical’ marriages listed in the graphic reflect this.”

Gavin replied:

The problem is that, as Tim knows full well, the documents themselves contain little or no condemnation of these customs.  If there’s warping and twisting going on, wouldn’t you assume that this would be signalled within the text? 

Well, Gavin and I might assume that, but the fact is that biblical narratives though they frequently recount the most terrible breaches of God’s desires (as expressed in the texts themselves) seldom mark them as such, we cannot rely on such explicit markers. But then the simple fact that no Bible character (with the arguable exception of Jesus) is presented without faults, sins and failings might suggest – and certainly does to my theological reading – that the Bible sees humans as sinful, warped and twisted. Nice middle-class liberal moderns may not like it, but we are all broken and in need of repair.

On the charge of biblicism that Gavin closes with, perhaps I’d be happy to plead guilty.

1. I am sorry, I have spent half an hour playing with HTML but cannot reproduce gavin’s emphasis in these quotes, something to do with the way this theme handles blockquotes :(
2. See below, I’ll continue to use these convenient shorthand designations despite Gavin’s scorning of them.
3. Much like a blog post getting lots of links would privilegeit in Google’s algorithms ;)
4. Except raging fundamentalists.
5. Though of course in a longer treatment I should have added other reasons, like the claim that Genesis serves as a preface to both the Torah and Scripture as a whole, and the further claim that the early chapters are particularly “laden” with significant teaching, and the claim that Gen 2 is “about” marriage and is one of few Old Testament texts that are…
6. I know why I put quotation marks round the word, since i seriously doubt that the gospel authors or the traditions that may stand behind them intended to “invent”, but why does Gavin use scare quotes here?
7. PS3/2/12  now corrected in the original post.

Photo from Soil-net

I have read the Bible professionally, and encouraged and taught others to read it, in three continents. The situations differed, including an African and a Western University, a Baptist theological college and a Bible School in a refugee camp. I have also supervised some exciting theses that develop interesting perspectives on understanding the Bible. So I am delighted to be participating in a project Global Perspectives on the Old Testament and Global Perspectives on the New Testament, I’ll be writing on Gender-bending as a male reader of Esther and on Jeremiah, possibly taking account of my current context (fencing a piggery and building a pig house ;)

Mark is looking for more contributors, so please read the Call for Contributions below, and think about writing something, or at least repost it on your blog and so share in an interesting project :)

Mark Roncace is seeking contributors for two volumes, Global Perspectives on the Old Testament and Global Perspectives on the New Testament. Pearson Prentice Hall is publishing Global Perspectives on the Bible this year. Next, separate OT and NT volumes, also to be published by Prentice Hall, will be produced. Both books will feature much of the same material as the original Bible volume, but with added essays.

The books—designed as entry level college textbooks—gather four different essays around one biblical text. The essays are brief (about 1,000 words and need not be “scholarly”) and articulate insights from a particular geographical, social, cultural, economic, religious, or ideological context/location. Here is the list of texts/books for which he need essays.

• Genesis 6-9
• Numbers 22-24
• Leviticus
• Judges
• 1-2 Kings
• Jeremiah
• Ezekiel 1-25
• Esther
• Ecclesiastes
• Daniel
• Crucifixion narratives
• Acts (other than chapter 2)
• Corinthians
• Galatians
• 1-2 Thessalonians
• James
• Pastorals (1-2 Timothy, Titus)
• 1-3 John
• 1-2 Peter

Please let Mark know if you are interested (mroncace@wingate.edu) in writing an essay on one (or two) of these texts and he will forward specific guidelines and a sample. In addition to scholars, Mark is particularly interested in gathering perspectives from non-professional readers. He is trying to run on a tight schedule: final OT essays are due April 1 and final NT essays are due June 1 (but remember they are only about 1,000 words).

Fig rolls stuck together (photo by fsse8info)

Rick Brannan has a really interesting post in which he begins to explore James and Cohesion. Most interesting to me was that he uses the Louw-Nida semantic domains rather than just lexical repetition (this first post was only concerned with the area of cohesion mediated by lexical or semantic repetition – or “semantic chains”¹

This is something I must follow up, once the present rust is over. In the meanwhile, I’ll contribute one reservation on a point of detail to Rick’s post. He writes:

lexical and semantic cohesion has to involve more than simple repetition and clustering. That might help identify areas of cohesion, but it does not define them.

This is to some extent true, examples like those he mentions of repetition from within the few huge semantic domains perhaps do not contribute much to even cohesion. And yet, a distinction between cohesion and coherence can be helpful. So “cohesion” refers to the features of a text that promote or create its sense of being a linguistic unity, what Crystal in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language called “the ties that bind a text together”, while “coherence” implies meaningful attraction and unity (“the underlying logical connectedness of a use of language”² ).
A cohesive text may be thoroughly incoherent:

The creation account in the chapter takes seven days, but every day some one feeds the parrot. Since they don’t like me, let them take it. Then my account will be in credit. For credit takes six days and parrots create chapters.

Is a pretty cohesive text, in terms of the language used it “hangs together” yet it is incoherent.

I will return to this topic :) but for now I must pack, it’s our annual denominational “Gathering” and Barbara and I are doing a workshop on “Teaching the Faith to Children” (not our choice of title but nevertheless a topic dear to both of us).

1. An interesting term for which he cited: O’Donnell/Porter/Reed’s paper “OpenText.org: the problems and prospects of working with ancient discourse”.
2.   Crystal, 417.

Photo by sean dreilinger

See also: Jesus and talk of God as father (part one)

When thinking about Jesus’ talk of God as father it is useful to examine how, in fact, he pictured God the Father. What did he mean by calling God ‘father’? To set this question in context it is helpful to consider the cultural stereotypes of father that were common in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean and the Roman Empire. Authority and discipline (especially the disciplining of male children) were strong and frequent overtones of father-language in the ancient world. Pilch explained the cultural stereotypes of parents in the biblical world like this:

Clearly, the father is viewed as severe, stern and authoritarian; the mother is viewed as loving and compassionate. Children respect and fear the father but love the mother affectionately even after they are married.¹

Such an understanding of the stern authoritarianism is almost absent² from father-talk in the Gospels. Rather, in Jesus’ speech, fathers feed and clothe their children (Matt 6:26-32; Luke 11:1-2, 13; 12:30; John 6:32 cf. Luke 24:49; John 6:27); give gifts to both good and bad children (Matt 5:45); are forgiving rather than punishing (Matt 6:14-15; 18:35; Mark 11:25; Luke 6:36 though the father does judge, in John 5:45; 8:16 but cf. 5:22); God as father deals with “infants” and “little ones” (Matt 11:25; 18:14; Luke 10:21). This divine “father” acts in ways which often fit the ancient world’s cultural stereotype of the mother more closely than they do the expectations of fatherly behaviour.

Photo by unaesthetic

David Lamb has a fine rant: I hate Study Bibles. Here’s the heart of it:

Study Bible comments are kind of like stuff on the internet. Sometimes the information is good, sometimes it’s junk. But at least when you go to the internet, you know you’re going to find some junk. You don’t expect to find junk in your Bible. At least you shouldn’t.

Some Study Bibles are relatively harmless, and even helpful at times. The notes are limited and just provide context and background that most typical Bible readers just don’t know.

The curse in Rev 21:18 is fairly explicit:

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll.

A charitable interpretation would be that the curse only applies to Revelation (“this scroll”) in which case I suppose a “study bible” with ZERO additions to Revelation escapes the curse. But friends your trusty NIV Study Bible is cursed with all the plagues described in Revelation!

At present I’m thinking and talking a lot about Jesus’ talk of God as father, and whether this naming of God means that Christians cannot think of God as (also) motherly.

The Old Testament used both father and mother-language to speak about God, but it used both seldom. Language such as shepherd, kinsman-redeemer, king, rock, lion and other pictures were preferred, perhaps because they were less likely to require that God had a partner. A father can only be a father if someone else is a mother, and the reverse. Such language therefore presented a greater danger of a descent into polytheism. Neither rocks, kings or lions need some other being to define them as such. While shepherds need a flock, the relationship is not reciprocal, as it would be for mothers and fathers. Sometimes therefore the Bible uses language which describes an undefined parental caring (like in Hos 11:1ff.) without naming either parent, and on other occasions imagery which mentions both parents provides a balance (like in Job 38:28f. cf. Jer 2:27) also helps avoid this danger. As we have seen there was also explicitly motherly language most notably in Isaiah 40ff. (Is 42:14; 43:1ff.; 42:2, 21ff.; 45:8ff.; 46:3f.; 49:13-21; 50:1-3; 66:7ff.) The New Testament, from the gospels onward, seems to contrast with both this reticence and balance. Father-language becomes common, and indeed ‘Father’ becomes a name for God.

This use of father as a name for God, first in the New Testament and then in Christian tradition until today, presents perhaps the most significant barrier to wide acceptance of the thesis of this book. For, the claim that the Christian God is as much like a mother as a father, sits uncomfortably with this New Testament use of “father” as a name for God. This discomfort is heightened if we recognise that Jesus own talk of God stands as the basis for the later naming of God as “father”. It is therefore important to examine this New Testament usage carefully.

Some German scholarship from the middle of the last century represented the father-language of the New Testament as a unique contribution made by Jesus. It was, they said, unlike both his Jewish forebears and his Early Church followers, because it was more frequent, personal and intimate than either. Much was made of Jesus’ use of ἀββα abba(Mark 14:36 cf. Gal 4:6; Rom 8:15),which was presented as being a baby-talk (and so more intimate and personal) version of ‘father’. They claimed in the light of this that there was a link between Jesus’ special intimacy with God and his and then the church’s subsequent use of father-language.¹

A more careful look at the evidence has questioned these claims. More recent scholarship asks whether Jesus himself was as clearly the beginning and driver of this father language as had been argued. Jeremias himself was aware of a striking feature of the Gospels’ father-talk for God on the lips of Jesus.²This usage seems to show a clear pattern (as argued by Hofius in New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology)³ suggesting that talk of God as father in the gospels increased as the distance of the memory from Jesus himself increased.

To put this claim in context before examining it further, father-language is used commonly across the New Testament to speak of God. In his response to an earlier publication of mine making these arguments Keown cited twenty three such references “in the undisputed Paulines”⁴ and a further eighteen in letters of disputed authorship,⁵ father language is especially common in the Johannine writings (1, 2 & 3 John and Rev)⁶ and in 1 Peter, but is also found in Acts, Hebrews, 2 Peter and Jude.⁷ The phrase “the God and Father of our lord Jesus” (Rom 15:6; 1 Cor 1:3; 2 Cor 1:3; 11:31; Eph 1:3, 17; Col 1:3; 1 Thess 1:1; 1 Peter 1:3) and the fact that God the father and Christ as son are correlated (by mention together) very frequently.⁸ Indicate clearly that the earliest Christians found the pairing of thought of God as father and Jesus as the son of God to be productive. For one of the key concerns of the New Testament writers was to make sense of, and to explore ways to talk about, who Jesus was and what his life, death, and resurrection mean.

There are traces in the New Testament of what is likely to be an earlier attempt to understand who Jesus was by likening him to divine personified Wisdom who in the Old Testament was pictured as the first-born of creation (Pr 8:22), existing before the earth (Pr 8:23ff.), with God at creation (Pr 8:27ff.) and who could say: “whoever finds me finds life and obtains favour from the LORD” (Pr 8:35). The earliest strands of the New Testament, and in particular Paul (and what are sometimes claimed to be pre-Pauline hymns) make the most use of the figure of Wisdom to understand Jesus in relation to God. ‘What pre-Christian Judaism said of Wisdom, and Philo also of the Logos, Paul and the others say of Jesus. The role that Proverbs, ben Sira, etc. ascribe to Wisdom, these earliest Christians ascribe to Jesus.’⁹ However, Wisdom Christology was not adequate to their understanding of Christ and his work, for Wisdom was neither human, nor truly divine. Talking of Father and Son enabled these things to be protected, especially when it took place in the context of Jesus’ designation as also “Son of Man”.

Considering the memories of Jesus’ use of father language to speak of God, Hofius’ quotes these figures for the use of such language in Jesus’ remembered words

In an earlier work I used this evidence to claim “The further removed from the historical Jesus the more likely a writer is to talk about God as father.”¹¹ Those figures and my interpretation of them have been questioned by Mark Keown, though his presentation of the evidence seems to show an even more pronounced pattern:

Interestingly as well as the high usage in John, and in the material particular to Matthew, Keown notes that Matthew five times adds the term “father” to material which is also found in Luke but where this term was missing there (Matt 5:45 cf. Lk 6:35; Matt 6:26 cf. Lk 12:24; Matt 7:21 cf. Lk 6:46-7; Matt 10:29 cf. Lk 12:6; Matt 18:14 cf. Lk 15:7). Whichever the order of composition of these two gospels this suggests that Matthew’s tradition was significantly more likely than Luke’s to remember Jesus as having used this name for God. This suggests the question: Is it more likely that Matthew remembers this name, which became typical Christian usage, where it had not in fact been present, or that Luke forgot it? In both the gospels and in the rest of the New Testament “father” is used of God most often in John and the Johannine writings (11 times in 1 John; 3 in 2 John; and 5 in Revelation).¹² So there is clear evidence for differential preferences for father-god language, with the Johannine writings, Matthew and 1 Peter showing the strongest tendency to use such langauge and Mark and Luke among those who use it least.

These usages suggest that: (a) Jesus did call God father, but that (b) he may have done so less than he was remembered as doing, and less himself than the early Christians did. Mark and Luke have only a few examples each, while Matthew remember him as doing so in sayings were he may well have used “God” or the “Most High” as Luke suggests. John develops a strong theology of the Father/Son relationship. In general this father-God language is more frequent in the New Testament in general than it is in quoted speech of Jesus (except in John, and it is often suggested that John reconstructs Jesus’ speeches theologically more than the Synoptics did).

If Jesus called God father (as indeed Jewish usage in his time sometimes did)¹³ and early Christians made significant use of both the image of Christ as the “son of God” and of Christians being invited into sharing such sonship “in Christ”. The fairly frequent usage of “father” of God in Paul also fits with this a picture of father language about God being more common in the early church than it was on Jesus’ own lips.¹⁴

The expression ‘Father in heaven’, and other use of father-language to speak of God was becoming more common (than the sparse Old Testament usage) in Palestinian Judaism by Jesus’ time. In the Old Testament such language was almost exclusively used in relation to the nation or community as a whole, while by the First Century the use had begun to extend to individuals having God as father as well.¹⁵So it would seem that the earliest witnesses to Jesus’ speech remember him as using language about God as father in ways which would not have seemed abnormal in a Jewish teacher of his time and place, while in the Early Church such language becomes a distinctive practice.

Pointing out that use of Father as a name for God was probably remembered in Jesus’ speech more often than he in fact used such language, does not deny that Jesus spoke of God as a ‘father’ or even used Father as a name for God. However, it should caution us from making too much of the supposed origin of this language in Jesus.

Previous posts about biblical teaching on family ( What is a family? and Does the Bible present a preferred pattern of family) led to lively discussion. How do we use the Bible rightly to establish teaching on family? This post addresses two aspects. The Bible uses different sorts of text to teach different ways. We also need to discern the direction or thrust of the Bible as a whole.

How the Bible teaches

The Bible is made up of many different sorts of text, and they do not all “work” the same. We understand a law from Leviticus differently from a Psalm, and both are read according to different rules from a proverb…

Some sorts of biblical passage intend to teach us something. Paul’s letters for example sought first to teach the early churches how to live, and so they also seek to teach us about Christian living.

A narrative does not teach in this direct way. When 2 Samuel 11ff. tells us about David’s adultery with Bathsheba, and subsequent executive murder of her husband Uriah. The purpose is not to teach the moral “adultery is wrong” nor even “murder is wrong”. It does want us to identify with David, and learn about temptation, sin and punishment from his mistakes. So when we read Ps 51 we will learn even more (but about God and ourselves rather than about “morals”).

Epistles and History are told in different ways and teach differently.

Narrative reaches deeper into our being, but we need to be more cautious in identifying its “teaching”. Epistles by contrast teach directly. When reading such direct teaching (and much of Jesus’ speech in the Gospels is like this – direct teaching) we need to be cautious about making the Bible say something different from what it intends. Using Jesus’ teaching about trying to fit a camel through the eye of a needle (Mat 19:24 etc.) to teach about the folly of over loading a beast of burden is simply a way to avoid what Jesus says “wealth is dangerous to our spiritual health”!

Western Christians seek to avoid Jesus’ teaching about divorce and remarriage by turning it into “safe” teaching about families.

I am saying two things here:

1. When reading a Bible passage that “teaches” we should be very cautious of making it teach something more than it sets out to teach – avoid the temptation to make the Bible say more than it does!

2. When drawing teaching from a narrative text we should be careful. Scripture is not seeking to teach ideas to readers of such texts. 2 Sam 11ff. is not merely a warning to murderous adulterers. It is a warning to all of us about following our desires and becoming faithless people.

The thrust of biblical teaching

Granted that much of the Bible (especially most poems and many stories) does not set out directly to teach, we need a way to confirm what we suspect the Bible may be teaching us.

We are so used to hearing people quote Bible verses (and seeing this – as I did above!) that we forget that we need to look at the whole sweep of biblical teaching. I’ll use quotes from the comments to the previous article to try to explain what I mean. (The quotes are in italics.)

Matthew interprets Hosea 11:1 in “messianic” fashion in Matthew 2:15 and gives a meaning to the text that is not evident in its original context.

This use by Matthew of Hos 11:1 is a really good textbook example of some of the issues involved in Christian reading of the Old Testament. At first glance it seems as if Matthew has “played fast and loose” with the biblical text. “Out of Egypt I called my son.” In Hosea the son is Israel, who as the following verses show was less than faithful to God. Matthew says that Jesus “fulfills” this. What does he mean? He uses the verb “fill, make full”(as do other New Testament writers) to point to a relationship between Jesus and Scripture. What the NT means by fulfil is something like: What Israel was intended to be, Jesus is fully. So Jesus was intended to be God’s son, called from Egypt to reveal God. Israel failed at this task, but Jesus (as the rest of the Gospel will show) fills the calling fully. In other words Matthew is not making Scripture say something it did not intend, rather he points to a consequence or conclusion drawn from comparing this text with the experience he has of Jesus.

Similarly: “In 1 Corinthians 9:8-9 Paul quotes from Deuteronomy 25:4 and gives it a meaning that was clearly not intended in its First Testament context.” Paul is also drawing a principle out of Scripture, that even an animal that works deserves to benefit from their labour – and as Paul says how much more a human!

In Matthew 22:32 Jesus quotes Exodus 3:6 as proof to the Pharisees that there is a resurrection. The text he quotes in its original context has nothing to do with resurrection.

It is true that the Scripture Jesus quotes is not about resurrection. Though it is about the nature of God, and God does claim to be the God of Abraham, not to “have been” his God. He refers to a present reality. Here Jesus points to a hint that is already present in Scripture. A hint that the NT again fills out, fulfills for us. God’s self-revelation in the Bible is not static and timeless, but incarnate first in the story of Israel, and then fully in Christ and in the NT witness to what his coming means.

As you point out I did the same thing! Taking what was merely a hint in the Old Testament and recognising its fullness in the revelation of God in Christ, and even in the later doctrines that the Church developed to understand him!

In your first article Tim you say “Already the “preface to the Bible” expresses the equality, and complementarity, of men and women. Through the parallelism of Hebrew poetry we see that together they are “in the image of God”. Through this union of difference, human marriages picture the union of difference that Christian theology calls Trinity”. You of course are reading a ‘trinitarian’ meaning back into the Genesis text that can hardly be said to be intended in the original context. I’m quite comfortable with your approach however because it is consistent with broader themes within the unified canon of scripture.

So, at times the New Testament goes beyond (but builds on) the Old. Because God’s self-revelation in the Bible was “incarnate” like a human being it grows and develops. But the new builds on, and fills out, the old. So that there is a direction or trajectory of Scriptural teaching.

I do not see this happening with the topic of family. This is a surprise to me, I would have expected clear teaching on such an important topic. When Scripture is silent then I am cautious of claiming more than I read… What I think is going on (and here I am merely expressing a feeling, not claiming to teach with authority ;-) is that on this topic God recognised that human cultures are different. Different cultures would have different family and child rearing patterns. So the Bible does not impose one pattern (e.g. the Mediterranean “household”). Rather it shows and teaches us the virtues that we need to strengthen our families.

This piece, like: What is a family? and Does the Bible present a preferred pattern of family was first published on the Vision network site, but changes of URL have lost it there, so I am reposting it here.

This is a follow-up to the article “What is a Family?” This follow-up asks whether the Bible presents a preferred pattern of family. Discussing Mat 19:3ff; Mk 10:2ff; Gen 1:27,28; 2:18-24; Colossians 3:18-21; Ephesians 5:21-6:4 and 1 Timothy 3:1-4 (cf Titus 1:6) as possible biblical bases for a model of “family”.

Part of the discussion between Sean and me (BTW Sean thanks for a stimulating and useful set of responses!) after my article “What is a Family ?” related to the question of whether the Bible presents a preferred pattern of family. I had used a number of examples to argue that the Bible takes families as they are and presents a set of values or virtues that go with “family”.

Sean however lists:

A number of passages however suggest that at the core of a preferred or normative family form/life are a husband and wife who are mother and father and are committed to the hesed that brings wellbeing of their children (This is not to say that in a broken world the God of grace does not accept and bless other family forms ).

Let’s look at these passages in turn (the introductory italicised material quotes from Sean’s comment):

Mtt 19:3ff; Mk 10:2ff Jesus affirmation of marriage between one man and one women can also be said to be an affirmation of the preferred context in which children are to be nurtured. By prescribing the form of the institution of marriage one would think he is also prescribing the core preferred form of family life.

Gen 1:27,28 Affirms not only the nature of the marriage relationship but the nature of the context in which children are to be raised ie “Be fruitful and increase in number”. It is the man and the woman, the husband and wife who are given the responsibility to nurture the fruit of their union.

We need to look at what is going on here and what Jesus is discussing. Because when interpreting the Bible it is vital that we identify the topic and do not use scriptures to teach about things that they are not “about”.

The topic is set by the Pharisees, “divorce” (Mat 19:3, Mark 10:2),  and Jesus addresses this topic, teaching from Genesis 1 and 2 that marriage is intended to be a lifelong commitment of a man and woman to each other and that therefore divorce spoils God’s intention in creating humans (Mat 19:4-6, Mark 10:6-9). This is teaching about divorce, not about family or childrearing. Marriage and children are evidently closely related, but as the example of African matrilineal societies shows not necessarily related in the way we modern Westerners assume.

Gen 1:27f. And Gen 2 are similar, they address the relationships between men and women, and they address marriage, but they do NOT set a pattern for family.

Colossians 3:18-21; Ephesians 5:21-6:4 Affirm the core relationships at the centre of family as husband, wife and their children.

These passages, by contrast, are about family, they tell of virtues we should show in our family relationships: love, faithfulness, submission, obedience… However, notice that in both cases the “family” is not a contemporary nuclear family, in each case it is assumed to include “slaves” too (Col 3:22ff.; Eph 6:5ff.). We can debate whether these “servants/slaves” (the Greek is doulos) were usually slaves or whether they were often junior members of the wider biological wh?nau. Whichever or both, they are members of the “family” being discussed, so we should not argue for our pattern of family as being “the” biblical pattern from these passages!

1 Timothy 3:1-4 Highlights key family relationships of the church leader and explictly mentions husbands, wives, fathers and children (cf Titus 1:6)

These passages discuss the qualities needed to be a leader in the community, and they focus on family values (as I have discussed them). Leaders should be monogamous (and – I’d assume but will not argue here – faithful) and bring up “their children” well, but these qualities are part of a much wider list: “Now a bishop must be above reproach, married only once, temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, an apt teacher, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and not a lover of money.” (1 Tim 3:2-3) Here too we are given a glimpse of the sort of people God wants us to be, including how we should behave in marriage and towards “our children”. But we are not presented a model family to which we should seek to conform – it seems God is happy to work with and in families as they are rather than propose one shape to fit everyone!

<Related digression>
I think one of the reasons this recognition comes hard for us is that over the centuries we have come to accept the idea that the Bible is a law book, or a “maker’s manual”, when really it is more like a series of sermons. The Bible much more often exhorts us to live better and more Godly lives, it seldom lays down rules. Just think what Paul had to say about “the Law”.
<End digression>

This piece was first published on the Vision network site, but changes of URL have lost it there, so I am reposting it here.

Family in the Bible

Social change (high rates of separation and divorce, legislation like the Civil Unions Act last year, some impacts of the much older Privacy Act…) together with the strong Christian tradition of “defending family values” combine to make it really important that as Christians we think through what we mean by “family”.

The primary paradigm (or ideal picture) of “family” in the Western world is a mum, a dad and an ever decreasing number of children. However, among Māori and Pacific cultures the paradigm begins with whānau – a much wider concept.

Before Christians can discuss family or family values we need to look closely at the Bible and hear what God has to teach us. In this short article I will try to suggest some starting points for developing a biblical view of family.

Words translated “family”

In the NT (although a large number of words express various sorts of kinship relationship: e.g. daughter-in-law, tribe…) most places where English translations use “family” a Greek word related to “oikos” (household) is used. In the other cases “family” means something more like tribe, since all are descendants of one often distant ancestor, e.g. “the Christ will come from David’s family” (John 7:42).

OT usage is similar, but with a stronger focus on the larger units. Mishpach (clan) is the commonest term, though beth ‘ab (father’s house) is also used. The beth ‘ab was not at all a “nuclear family”. It included slaves and servants, as well as married children and their children, and possibly a widowed aunt as well. A mishpach was made up of a number of households and could be as small as a village or as large as a tribe. Hapu or perhaps whanau seem the nearest equivalents in contemporary NZ to a biblical “family”.

A model family?

The Bible nowhere presents an “ideal family” that we can use as a model for a biblical view of “family”. Firstly no family is presented as a model, and secondly few were even close to ideal. Think of the families the Bible does present. Here is a sample with some comments:

• Adam/Eve – a two parent nuclear family par excellence which produced the first murderer.
• Abraham/Sarah (and Hagar) – a ménage à trois with dysfunctional power relationships.
• Jacob/Leah and Rachel – polygamy producing a dysfunctional family.
• David and his women – this time polygamy combines with executive murder and adultery…
• Esther/Ahasuerus – Esther is selected in a beauty contest to replace the disobedient queen Vashti.
• Timothy who has a mother and grandmother who were believers, but his father was a pagan (he is called a Hellenos, a Pagan Greek, not an Hellenistes, a Greek-speaking believer).

Even Jesus’ family – whom Christians sometimes call “the Holy Family” – left Joseph as step-father. However good a father he may have been (and we simply do not know since the gospels tell us almost nothing about Jesus’ relationship with his parents or brothers) few people argue that step-parenting is God’s ideal!

This surprising apparent lack of biblical teaching on the basic unit of society even allows the growth in the USA today of groups like truthbearer.org an “organization for Christian polygamy”.

Biblical Family Values

If the Bible has no model family structure to propose, it does identify and promote a clear set of virtues associated with families and living in family. These virtues are vital in constructing a Christian understanding of family today.

Typical or normative?

However, we need to be careful here. Some Bible passages describe how ancient Israel, or Christians of the first century, lived. Others prescribe how God wants us to behave. On some issues of social structure and organization Christians are clear that biblical patterns are descriptive not prescriptive. So Christians today no longer defend slavery as “biblical” (despite considerable potential textual support for the kindly keeping of slaves!), few either demand that biblical economic prescriptions be applied (returning land within a generation of purchase and interest-free loans are only the start)!

Even prescriptive texts (e.g. Proverbs) come to us carrying the baggage of the social organisation of Ancient Israel or of the Roman Empire. Most Christians accept that the spirit or principles of these prescriptions still apply, but few seek to follow their letter. The same may be true of families and family values! So Proverbs 13:24 may not so much be counselling us to beat our children as to discipline them (while heavy beating was a common form of discipline in the ancient world – see Ex 21:20 – it is no longer acceptable). Paul’s injunctions (e.g. Col 3:21; Eph 6:4) may be felt to better express the normative biblical view of discipline.

So, what does the Bible as a whole present as normative for our understanding of family? Here is one (certainly incomplete) list:

Family images God

Biblical pictures of what God is like, and of humanity’s relationship with God, are mainly drawn from either royalty or family life. (These were the two predominant institutions in the ancient world).

God is (to give just a partial list):

• father – e.g. Dt 32:6; Ps 2:7; Mat 6:6
• mother – e.g. Dt 32:18; Is 49:15; Mat 23:37
• redeemer – e.g. Ex 15:13; Ps 73:2; 77:15 (this is very much a “family” word as a look at the examples of human “redeemers” shows, interestingly though the verb is used the noun is absent from the NT)
• husband – e.g. Jer 2:2; Hos 2; Rev 21:2

The chosen people are:

• son or daughter – e.g. Gen 42:5; Ex 1:1; Is 22:4; Heb 12:7
• household – e.g. Ex 16:31; Num 20:29; Hos 1:4; Eph 2:19
• wife – e.g. Ez 16; 23; Rev 19:7
• adopted stray – e.g. Ez 16 cf. Ps 2:7 & Eph 1:5
• slave – e.g. Dt 5:15; Josh 24:17; Micah 6:4; James 1:1

If families help us understand what God is like, then God shows us what families should be like!

Marriage is a one-to-one partnership

From the Genesis account of the creation of humans, to Jesus’ own teaching and its NT outworking, a biblical understanding of marriage is centred on the claim that God made women and men as different-but-equal partners, who need each other, not only for procreation but also by their very natures. When a woman and a man marry they become “one flesh”. Because of this, marriage is the lifelong partnership of one man and one woman. This partnership is total, including the spiritual, mental, physical, and even the economic. It is expected to produce children (when, in the Bible, this is not the outcome of marriage it is a special tragedy, from which many biblical characters prayed to be delivered).

Gen 1:27:

So God created humankind in his image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

Already the “preface to the Bible” expresses the equality, and complementarity, of men and women. Through the parallelism of Hebrew poetry we see that together they are “in the image of God”. Through this union of difference, human marriages picture the union of difference that Christian theology calls Trinity.

In Gen 2:18:

The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

God expresses humanity’s need to be completed by a complementary partner. The word for “helper” (‘ezer) is most often used to describe God as humanity’s helper(Gen 49:25; Dt 33:26 etc.)! A few verses later the man concurs with his creator’s opinion of this complementary equality saying (2:23):

This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman’, for she was taken out of man.

That this partnership of equals is the point of the story – and that it speaks of marriage – is confirmed when this episode ends with the words:

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. (2:24)

It is this teaching that Jesus confirms when asked his views about divorce (Mat 19:3ff.; Mark 10:2ff.) “what God has joined together, let man not separate.” His teaching goes on to assert that human law (Moses) allows divorce – in case of adultery – on account of human sinfulness.

The epistle to the Ephesians takes the same OT text to teach on the “profound mystery” of Christ and the church, and of how we are the “body of Christ”.

Loving-kindness (hesed): a family word for God’s love and care

God’s faithful and dependable loving care for us is often described using a Hebrew word that is difficult to render in English. “His hesed endures forever!” is a refrain in Psalms 118 and 136 and the word is used in many places to describe God, but does it mean love, mercy, faithfulness…?

This Hebrew word hesed describes the virtue expected in relationships (like family and covenant). It is a dynamic virtue that we see exemplified in God’s loving and enduring relationship to Israel. It is often associated with words that express grace and love as well as fidelity. It implies the mutual support and protection that family members are expected to offer one another. It may well be the Hebrew thought behind John’s affirmation that “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16).

Since hesed is used to describe actions like paying off a cousin’s or a nephew’s debt it clearly suggests that in the Bible family is not based on “love” (particularly not erotic love as the Western world defines family) but on reliability and dependability. When one party is stronger or more capable hesed involves protection and support. Yet it is mutual and not one-sided.

Families: a God’s eye view?

In the Western world today family is all about marriage and children. Marriage is all about love (understood as socially acceptable lust). Both family and marriage are discussed in terms of “rights”. Increasingly, even parenting is seen as a “right”.

The biblical view is different at every point. Family is much wider than a marriage and the children it produces. Family is about faithfulness and solidarity; about obligation, protection and trust; not about rights. Marriage does not make a family, but marriage widens the circle of existing families. While love is important, it is not the making of a marriage, loyalty is. Parenting is a gift and a blessing, not a right.

Our world likes models to which people can conform. The Bible takes families as they are, and proposes appropriate virtues: trust, loyalty, mutual dependence, faithfulness. Families that manage to show these virtues are indeed the backbone of society, and an echo of how God relates to us (children adopted into the divine family).