THE BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY: GROUNDING THE FAMILY

What are the theological foundations of the family? As St. Paul declared in doxological jubilee, speaking of the triune Majesty, the living and true God revealed in the cosmos, Canon, and Christ: “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36). Since, according to scripture, history, and experience, the family is the central sphere of these “all things,” it follows that the family is rooted and deeply grounded in the nature of the holy Trinity.

Family: Rooted in the Nature of God

The family is rooted and grounded in the nature of the triune God. Human beings, individually and socially, are created in the imago Dei, the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26—28; cf. Ps. 8, etc.). In addition to the constitutional aspects of human nature, e.g., being rational, moral, spiritual beings, etc., this imago has a profoundly relational dimension.

Trinity and Family

Man is made to reflect God’s nature and glory, in a creaturely sense, not rationally only but also relationally. This relational reflection is firstly and obviously Godward, vertically, as the temporal fulfillment of God’s originally-good purposes for humanity hung on Adam’s perfect and personal covenant-keeping obedience to YHWH’s law-word. Similarly, man’s interpersonal relationships are what they are as humans display God’s moral attributes toward each other and enjoy the gracious metaphysical common ground people enjoy between themselves, as God’s image bearers.

Less obvious to many Christians, however, is the second horizontal plane of man’s relational image reflecting function, which is to “replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over [it]” and to “dress” and “keep” the garden-temple that YHWH had planted and wherein he originally placed man, “eastward in Eden” (Gen. 1:28; 2:8, 15). So, the object of man’s relational reflection of the image of God is tripartite: Godward, and also toward both his fellows and the rest of the non-human creation.  

            Man’s divine mandate was to cultivate and expand the garden-temple, rule over it in a God-like way, and fill the earth with subsequent image-bearing progeny—man was not, is not  to be, nor ever will be “an island to himself” (Gen. 1:28). This is because God himself is not an “island”; he is not a monad, an abstract point of singularity, as he is idolatrously conceptualized of in Judaism, Islam, and the later German idealism that come out of the Enlightenment. Rather, God is tri-unity. God is both unity and plurality; he’s the ultimate One and the Many. God is one with respect to the “what” question; yet he is many—three to be exact—with respect to the “who” question. He is one in his essential nature, yet three, i.e., Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in the three co-equal, co-eternal, and co-glory-worthy persons. God is thus the ultimate and absolute Society or Community.

            As God created, ordered, and evaluated his creational works in the beginning, he pronounced that things—as they conformed and operated according to his law-word ordinances to reflect his glory—were “good” no less than seven times in Genesis chapter one. “Good” is God’s ordo rerum, his design and ordering of things. Nevertheless, in chapter two of Genesis, YHWH sees a moment in his creation that an aspect of his creation is “not good,” namely that man, God’s image-bearer, “was alone” (Gen. 2:18). Man as individual was insufficient to reflect God’s image and glory. This is not surprising, since in the nature of the Godhead, and therefore the nature of the case, aloneness is eternally impossible.

             God therefore created Adam his ezer-woman, his “help meet” (2:18). Eve was Adam’s co-equal in terms of her nature, dignity, and moral value, as she enjoyed an equal share in the honor, majesty and mystery of the divine image of her Creator. Similarly, in obedience to the culture-dominion mandate of Genesis 1:28, as Adam and Eve became “fruitful and multiplied,” they produced image-bearing progeny, according to the purposes of God. Man’s co-mission therefore requires a plurality of persons; it requires a micro-society, a family. Thus, the triune Majesty—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—created humanity in his very image, to reflect both the unity and the plurality of the Godhead.  So, according to their very nature—human nature—each member of the human family, the father, mother, and child(ren), share equal dignity and value, according to their mutually equivalent participation in the imago Dei.                                  

Family: Multi-Personal Image-Bearing

            Apart from the necessity of the family as the uni-plural image-bearer, for sake of the realization of God’s purposes expressed in the cultural mandate (Gen. 1:28) there are manifold ways that the family reflects the image of the ontological Trinity (i.e., the a se Godhead, in and of himself, apart from any creature) in the ordinary rhythms of the family’s daily, covenantal life together. One such example comes by way of daily private family worship in the home.

            For eternity past each person of the Trinity has enjoyed the full communion, love,  and unmediated glory of the other two. This absolute spiritual love and unity is reflected, imaged, mirrored in a creaturely way, when the father, mother, and child(ren) come around the Word of God, listen to the voice of God, in the Spirit of God. In this harmonious fellowship and worship, the family reflects in glory and harmony of the intra-Trinitarian communion, love and fellowship, which is for the mutual good and honor of the others. Thus, being created in the image of God, the family subsequently reflects God’s nature through their private worship, revealing the love, harmony and sweet communion of the three persons of the triune God.

Lessons of a Loss

Last Friday morning my bagel break was interrupted by allowing access to some dummy contractors at a gate on the other end of the plant's campus. Unsurprisingly, I was not a little irritated. However, half way there the Listener's Bible snippet came on the radio. It was a reading from Romans 12. Max's velvet voice began, "What are the marks of true Christian spirituality...listen to the Bible from..." I listened carefully, but the line "rejoice with the who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn" stood out remarkably to me, like never before.

This bit struck me in the soul. Everything after that was like Charlie Brown's teacher squawking in the background, as I began to prayerfully turn it over and over in my mind and challenge my heart with its imperatives. The Holy Spirit knew what I needed to hear and was making it stick.

Within the hour, one of my closer friends, Bob (not his real name), who is a retired once-weekly vendor at the plant that I work at, left a voicemail. My contacts on the new iPhone didn’t recognize Bob’s number. Consequently, I thought it was either a wrong number or some other undesirable caller. When I did get around to checking the voicemail, I could sense in Bob’s voice that he wasn't calling to share something for our mutual rejoicing.

I waited until I got off at 4p, so our conversation wouldn't be interrupted by the several-many issues at work.

Bob answered to tell me that Joanna, his well-beloved wife, who had struggled for more than two decades with a severely debilitating disease, had passed away the Thursday last. She was having some breathing issues throughout the night, which improved at about 3a. This let Bob get a couple hours sleep on the sofa by where she was resting. By 9a, he felt things were well enough to take a quick shower. After what he said was less than 10 minutes, he came back out and she was gone. After calling 911, and working CPR for several minutes, he checked her pupils, which were completely dilated and unchanged by the pen light. She was gone before he started. Still, 15 or so EMS worked hard to bring her back to us. Nevertheless, this was not God’s will...not just yet.

So, three points. (1) If I would have known how powerfully the Holy Spirit was going work that verse into me for the ministry-purpose to both Bob and me that was lying a mere hour or few ahead of me, I would have had an entirely different, a zealous, attitude about leaving my warm bagel to open that gate at the North End. However, I should've known, or rather did know. God works all things--seemingly trivial dispatches to secured gates--for our good and to the fulfillment of his great and all-wise plan and purposes. This I "know." Yet I fail to appropriate that knowledge too often in my day in day out rhythms, like opening gates and other things that inconvenience me at the moment. Lesson: Nothing is inconsequential with our omni-efficient God; he foreordained, purposes, and micromanagingly orders all of life's mundanity, thus nothing is trivial or mundane. What seemed like simply being bothered to open a gate was rather our loving God preparing me for the future and ruling over all with his Word and Spirit; it was him opening the rusty gate of my heart, so I could weep and mourn with a broken brother.

So, (2) please remember with us our widower brother this Lord’s Day, as we all gather at the foot of the throne of grace. (My relationship with Bob, incidentally, began several years ago when, as he was signing in one day, and shared that he had just come from the chiropractor. I asked why. He explained his beloved’s situation and how he has to move her and dress her, etc., because of the immobilizing aspects of her condition, and that his 50-something back was just not what it once was. I took the opportunity to explain my biblical-covenantal understanding of marriage, and that his faithfulness was a great encouragement and witness to me and what marriage means to our nutty culture. The rest is history, as they say.)

Finally, (3) per Bob's adamant wishes, and in memorial to Joanna, let us not miss a single opportunity to show-and-tell our wives what wonderful women God has blessed us with, pointing out their personal fulfillments of the Prov. 31 wife, and their picture-painting ministry to us about what the Church (should) looks like (Eph. 5). Let us shower them with love and praise. Likewise, let us pray earnestly for the redeeming-loving grace necessary to be abundantly faithful Christ-likers in return, letting them know their value to us, "even unto death,” as Bob’s marriage-long commitment illustrated to me.

Calvin on Matthew 5:17—22, an Abridgment

“We must keep in mind the object which Christ had in view. While he invites and exhorts the Jews to receive the Gospel, he still retains them in obedience to the Law…

“I am not come to destroy. God had, indeed, promised a new covenant at the coming of Christ; but had, at the same time, showed, that it would not be different from the first, but that, on the contrary, its design was, to give a perpetual sanction to the covenant, which he had made from the beginning, with his own people.

“I will write my law, (says he,) in their hearts,
and I will remember their iniquities no more,” (Jeremiah 31:33, 34).

 “By these words he is so far from departing from the former covenant, that, on the contrary, he declares, that it will be confirmed and ratified, when it shall be succeeded by the new. This is also the meaning of Christ’s words, when he says, that he came to fulfill the law: for he actually fulfilled it, by quickening, with his Spirit, the dead letter, and then exhibiting, in reality, what had hitherto appeared only in figure.

“With respect to doctrine, we must not imagine that the coming of Christ has freed us from the authority of the law: for it is the eternal rule of a devout and holy life, and must, therefore, be as unchangeable, as the justice of God, which it embraced, is constant and uniform…

“Let us therefore learn to maintain inviolable this sacred tie between the law and the Gospel, which many improperly attempt to break. For it contributes not a little to confirm the authority of the Gospel, when we learn, that it is nothing else than a fulfillment of the law; so that both, with one consent, declare God to be their Author.

“Whoever then shall break Christ here speaks expressly of the commandments of life, or the ten words, which all the children of God ought to take as the rule of their life. He therefore declares, that they are false and deceitful teachers, who do not restrain their disciples within obedience to the law, and that they are unworthy to occupy a place in the Church, who weaken, in the slightest degree, the authority of the law; and, on the other hand, that they are honest and faithful ministers of God, who recommend, both by word and by example, the keeping of the law…Those who shall pour contempt on the doctrine of the law, or on a single syllable of it, will be rejected as the lowest of men…

“The kingdom of heaven means the renovation of the Church, or the prosperous condition of the Church, such as was then beginning to appear by the preaching of the Gospel…The meaning of that phrase is, that God, restoring the world by the hand of his Son, has completely established his kingdom. Christ declares that, when his Church shall have been renewed, no teachers must be admitted to it, but those who are faithful expounders of the law, and who labor to maintain its doctrine entire…Again, we must observe the description he gives of good and holy teachers: that not only by words, but chiefly by the example of life, they exhort men to keep the law…

“The principal charge brought by Christ against their doctrine may be easily learned from what follows in the discourse, where he removes from the law their false and wicked interpretations, and restores it to its purity…

“It has been a prevailing opinion, that the beginning of righteousness was laid down in the ancient law, but that the perfection of it is pointed out in the Gospel. But nothing was farther from the design of Christ, than to alter or innovate any thing in the commandments of the law. There God has once fixed the rule of life which he will never retract. But as the law had been corrupted by false expositions, and turned to a profane meaning, Christ vindicates it against such corruptions, and points out its true meaning, from which the Jews had departed.

“That the doctrine of the law not only commences, but brings to perfection, a holy life, may be inferred from a single fact, that it requires a perfect love of God and of our neighbor, (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18.) He who possesses such a love wants nothing of the highest perfection. So far as respects the rules of a holy life, the law conducts men to the goal, or farthest point, of righteousness…

“That Christ, on the other hand, intended to make no correction in the precepts of the law, is very clear from other passages: for to those who desire to enter into life by their good works, he gives no other injunction, than to, keep the commandments of the law, (Matthew 19:17.) From no other source do the Apostles, as well as Christ himself, draw the rules for a devout and holy life. It is doing a grievous injury to God, the author of the Law, to imagine that the eyes, and hands, and feet alone, are trained by it to a hypocritical appearance of good works, and that it is only in the Gospel that we are taught to love God with the heart. Away, then, with that error, ‘The deficiencies of the law are here supplied by Christ.’

The Symmetry of Covenant Sexuality in 1 Cor. 7:1—7

1-2a	Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication
2b, c	A. let every man        B. have his own wife, and        B. let every woman A. have her own husband.
3	A. Let the husband        B. render unto the wife               C. due benevolence:               C. and likewise also        B. the wife A. unto the husband.
4	A. The wife hath not power of her own body,        B. but the husband:        B. and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, A. but the wife.
5	A. Defraud ye not one the other,        B. except it be with consent for a time,               C. that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer;        B. and come together again, A. that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.
6, 7	A. But I speak this by permission,        B. and not of commandment.        B. For I would that all men were even as I myself. A. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that.