I just read Al Mohler’s book We Cannot Be Silent and he does a good job assessing the challenges to Christians by the sexual revolution. He is exactly right in his discussion that it did not start with same sex marriage, and it will not end there. Others like Francis Schaeffer and Alastair MacIntyre went further back in history to trace how indeed this began much further back than what Mohler discusses, but in terms of the changes over the last century or so he does a good job. He is one of the few evangelicals who clearly and humbly recognizes that the evangelical church was completely out of touch in the 1960’s as the issues of contraception (The Pill) and abortion were developing, admitting that the Catholic church was engaged but evangelicals were not. He is also clear about how Christians have been complicit in the destruction of both morality in general and marriage specifically by their lack of recognition of what was going on back in the 1960’s and 1970’s but also because liberal clergy, both Protestant and Catholic, were actively undermining Christianity rather than teaching truth. The unthinking acceptance of the separation of sex and procreation from marriage by both The Pill and by no fault divorce made the parishioners in the pews contributors to the assault on marriage and the family as well. We need to change our teaching from the pulpit, our teaching in Bible studies, and our personal practice in the bedroom if we are to be faithful to the Bible. As he points out, Christian couples assume that so long as they are married there is no issue with using reproductive technology like in-vitro fertilization and contraception but that is simply not so. They also assume that as long as they are married there is no issue with personal practices (like sodomy) that were long forbidden by the Church, and that also is not so. Mohler is absolutely correct on all of these matters.
He is also correct that it will not end with same sex marriage, as the transgender revolution is already showing, and there is no reason to think it will end there either. Polygamy, polyamory, and who knows what else will continue to be pursued by the revolutionaries. The book was released in late 2015 and this has continued to be the case.
I do think he could have done more to present a picture of Biblical marriage that is more inspiring and aspirational, however. Presenting marriage only in terms of covenant, which is essentially a matter of Law, is accurate as far as it goes but I do not think it demonstrates how Biblical marriage provides a reality, a beauty, and a purpose to which same sex marriage can never aspire.
Let me say up front that I am not a supporter of covenant theology in general. Covenant theology proposes that covenants are typical of God’s actions even before the Creation and The Fall, proposing a Covenant of Redemption within the Trinity and a Covenant of Works before The Fall. Since the Bible makes no mention of any covenants until after The Fall, my opinion is that covenants are only necessary after The Fall, just like The Law (Torah) was only necessary after The Fall. The Trinity also has no need for covenants within itself. The operative principle within the Trinity is Love, not Law. So also between God and man before The Fall. As Paul points out in Rom. 3:20, ‘by Law is the knowledge of sin’. Law is indeed necessary and obedience is required, both in terms of society and in terms of the Bible. But Law is not needed until after The Fall, and covenants are a matter of Law. In describing marriage, Mohler relies mostly on the idea of covenant. Marriage is indeed a covenantal relationship and that is necessary in this fallen world. But the goal of marriage as it was created in Genesis 1-2 is for more than just obedience to Law. On page 65 he says that the ‘why’ for Christians to define marriage as they do is simply “as an act of obedience to the living God.” While that is true as far as it goes, and to obey the Law of God is indeed good and profitable, obedience to Law does not provide insight into why God designed marriage as He did nor to provide some insight into how that design is a matter of beauty and something to be sought after. He essentially argues that God designed us that way and we should therefore obey, which is true, but it doesn’t let Christian marriage shine as a light of beauty and aspiration to a lost world. And I think a proper reading of Genesis 1-2 does provide insight into that beauty.
He comes close to getting there in the chapter about what the Bible says about sex, but doesn’t quite go far enough. What happens here reminds me of what he had already pointed out about the 1960’s: evangelicals had viewed contraception and abortion as ‘Catholic issues’ and as a result did not do any serious thinking about the Biblical issues involved. The Catholic Church got it right, and we evangelicals got it wrong. The same thing is happening here in regard to the theology of the body. In this chapter he proposes that we need a Biblical theology of sex and a Biblical theology of the body. He is right, but what he outlines is not quite enough, while the theology proposed by Pope John Paul II is much better. It is much better because what Mohler outlines is based essentially on Law while the Pope includes Grace while not ignoring Law.
The basic issue here is the Imago Dei, the image of God in us. John Paul II points out that in Genesis 1, and also in other passages that refer to the male/female creation including the teaching of Jesus; it is very clear that God made man as male and female in His image. That is, being made male and female is an inherent part of what it means to be in God’s image and marriage itself is an image-bearer. The Pope is not the only one to talk about this: Karl Barth, Frances Schaeffer, Christopher J. H. Wright and others also do. But the Pope went to great lengths of developing the idea and relates the oneness of male/female in marriage to the oneness of God in the Trinity, and he does it very well. (See other blog here for more on marriage as an image bearer: Marriage as Image Bearer) While Mohler brings up the image of God, he does not spend much time there. But this is where the beauty lies. The relationship within the Trinity expresses love, self-giving, creativity and fruitfulness from all eternity. The ‘they shall be one flesh’ of marriage echos the statement that ‘the Lord is One’ of the Shema. Marriage is a human embodiment of those attributes of God, in His image. Some of them, especially the gift of self for which the body is specifically designed as male and female (‘he who keeps his life shall lose it’) and the fruitfulness of procreation are totally impossible in same sex marriage. Same sex marriage can only seek to counterfeit these things with bodily actions that deny and assault the design and testimony of the body itself, and fruitfulness is impossible without the counterfeit of reproductive technology. All of them provide a view of beauty and truth to which marriage is to aspire, an aspiration that goes far beyond Law-keeping. Law-keeping is necessary, but so is the vision of what marriage was intended to be as a picture of the love of God within the Trinity. This is the grace part, to be gifted with an embodied glimpse of the eternal life of God. Nothing less than Biblical marriage can ever aspire to this.
Mohler’s book is much better than most of the evangelical books about marriage from the last 30 years in regard to the way things have developed in the last 100 years. It is really honest on the matters of contraception and divorce and how we evangelicals were totally deaf to the great issues of our time in the 1960’s while the Catholic church was seeking to do the right thing. However, he does not quite recognize that we are making that same mistake again by not emphasizing marriage as an inherent and beautiful part of what it means to be image-bearers, by not taking advantage of the teaching from Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. We need both Law and Grace.
