A Thought on the Meaning of "Covenant" Marriage...and What It Can't Mean.

 

Today we often stress the covenantal nature of marriage by pointing to the mutual vows between the two entering therein. We oft illustrate it by talking of other social contracts. In this modernized conception, the gay marriage proponents find some degree of traction; it also neutralizes beefy objections coming from orthodoxy. In some of the marriage debates of his own day, Jesus points his opponents to Genesis 2 (Matt 19). There we find YHWH "cutting" the covenant; he divided Adam’s flesh, which became the covenant sacrifice. It was from this flesh cutting-division that YHWH ratified the covenant, and from which he established a new covenantal relation.

This event became the archetype of OT covenant theology (cp. Gen 15). From the divided flesh, God made a new and different flesh. Only if the "twain" were different could their union remake them into "one flesh" again. So, from this perspective on marriage, as based on the archetypal "cutting" rite in Gen 2, the argument for gay marriage in the Christian context is nonsensical, since in same-sex unions the cutting of the covenant is impossible, as it is a picture of the one (kind of) flesh becoming (rather remaining) one flesh. Thus gay "marriage" is biblically and covenantally impossible. This may help to displace the tired cliché, "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve," which simplistically points to creation rather than covenant.

The Yuck Factor, Carl Truman

The yuck factor is a significant and deadly element of Christian thinking. Take, for example, the various denominations currently tearing apart over the issue of homosexuality and gay marriage.  Many, if not all, such denominations have routinely allowed men, and often women, who deny the resurrection, to occupy pulpits for many years with impunity.  Denial of the resurrection is, according to Paul, lethal to any kind of gospel witness and utterly destructive of Christian hope, to the point that it not only denies the saving action of God but actually makes Christians the most pitiable of all people.

So why the bust up over homosexuality when the most important things have already been made matters over which we can institutionally agree to differ?   I suspect the answer is the yuck factor.  Homosexuality is, or perhaps better was, revolting to a certain generation. It disgusted them in a way that polite, educated men denying the faith did not. That generation is now rapidly passing away and a new one is rising, with a mindset shaped not only by knowing kind, civil, gay friends but also by  a myriad pop culture images and an increasingly aggressive politicization of the issue.  The yuck factor does not apply any more. More here.