1) Matthew 5:18-20 - All of the commandments in the Law should be taught for observance in the kingdom as it has been inaugurated (cf. Acts 2:34-36; Heb. 1:3-4; although there are redemptive-historical, covenant-theological adjustments in the precise manner of observance today--see, e.g., 1 Cor. 5:7-8; 9:8-14 for ecclesial applications of civil and ceremonial laws--not to say these particular applications exhaust their usefulness for this age. See also Vern S. Poythress, The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses for very helpful work here.
2) Matt. 7:12; 22:36; 23:34-40 -- Love for God and neighbor summarizes the Law's demands.
3) Matt. 23:23 -- There are lesser and "weightier" matters of the Law. The weightier matters include justice, mercy, and faithfulness.
4) Matt. 19:8 -- At least some of the Law was accomodated to a hard-hearted, fleshly covenant people, and regulated certain realities of sin in a fallen, unregenerate world, rather than directly reflecting the divine created ideal. The divine ideal is being restored now in the era of the Spirit.
5) Matt. 5:21-48 -- The Law implies a demand for, and points forward to a greater enactment of, divine justice in and through the covenant people, such that its commands are obeyed holistically, maturely, from a circumcised heart, unto true life and flourishing.
6) Jn. 7:19; Mk. 7:1-23; Matt. 23 -- The Jewish leadership and hostile crowds did not truly obey the heart of the Law, despite their scrupulous application of extrabiblical traditions in an attempt to "fence" the Law (and at times actually for the purpose of subtly justifying the breaking of important commandments like the 5th Commandment about honoring parents). Kingdom disciples must actually exceed the scribes and Pharisees in righteousness (Matt. 5:20)--this is not a reference to justification, as important as that is.
7) Matt. 5:17; Lk. 24:25-27; Jn. 5:39, 45-46 -- All of the Law (and the Prophets and Writings) pointed forward to, testify of, and are fulfilled by, Jesus Christ.
Tuesday, October 18, 2022
Friday, October 7, 2022
Baptist Faith & Message Ch. 18 "The Family"
"God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society. It is composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood, or adoption.
Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race.
The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.
Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate to their children God’s pattern for marriage. Parents are to teach their children spiritual and moral values and to lead them, through consistent lifestyle example and loving discipline, to make choices based on biblical truth. Children are to honor and obey their parents."
Over a decade later, I am completing this exercise of relatively light interaction with the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 via blog articles. I am not sure what is next. I have thought about doing a similar exercise with the Augsburg Confession (a Lutheran confessional document), however, I also have other writing projects in mind--a major work on assurance of salvation, some more formal work on physical health, and some highly unorganized blurting out of all my systematic-theological views at this time of my theological development.
In any case, I have enjoyed reading and interacting with each section of the BF&M. It is a faithful expression of key Christian beliefs, as well as a clear articulation of a few extra baptistic distinctives, with some of which I differ today. This last section on family is no exception. These truths have never been more under attack in our (at least my) American context than in these last two decades, so they need to be articulated and defended vigorously. Some of the language towards the end of this section rings a little strangely to my Presbyterian, paedobaptistic ears, but none of it is incorrect.
The BF&M here speaks of the family as a foundational institution, defines family, defines marriage, states marriage's main purposes, defines male and female roles in the home, declares children to be a blessing, and defines responsibilities of parents and children.
The family indeed was the first human "institution" of God, before the state (arguably established, at least in principial form, in Genesis 9), and even before the church (defined as a formal covenant "assembly" (established, in a sense, at Sinai)). Since slavery and indentured servitude are no longer part of our society, it is adequate to define a family or "household" as persons related by blood, marriage, or adoption. Marriage is a covenantal life-commitment between a man and a woman. Leaving aside more controversial debates such as New Testament rules about divorce and exception clauses (which the BF&M does not take sides on explicitly), affirming the biblical, traditional boundaries of marriage is extremely important given the cultural challenges of today.
It is at some level unnecessary to quibble about complex linguistics and archaeological arguments and their bearing on Romans 1:18ff, or 1st Corinthians 6:9-10, given the unchanged Old Testament presuppositions of Jesus and the New Testament writers regarding sexual ethics (see Matt. 5:28; nevermind the explicit, positive teaching of Jesus on marriage in Matthew 19 or Paul's exposition of the Christological meaning of marriage in Ephesians 5, both assuming and reaching back to the narrative of Genesis 1-2). However, the progressive and revisionist abuses of Romans 1 are particularly bad and deserve brief refutation.
To try and defend the idea that Paul was not in his writings condemning committed same-sex relationships of the sort we are mostly concerned with today, many revisionists argue that the passage in Romans 1 that seems on the surface to describe homosexuality as a negative result of divine judgment (which invites further judgment)--specifically, Romans 1:26-27--is describing either pederasty (abusive adult-child sexual relationships), homosexual practices only in the context of pagan temple worship, or homosexual practices contrary to certain individuals' "natural" heterosexual inclinations (i.e. the sin is "going against their own natural orientation"; in other words, it would be equally sinful for someone of homosexual orientation to go against their natural orientation by participating in heterosexual practices, on this view).
In Paul's, mind, however, "natural" is not a reference to subjective psychological experience but to the objective created order, founded on God's activity in Genesis 1 and 2. Moreover, the text explicitly states that the sinful "exchange" was of the "natural function", not of a natural "desire" or orientation or anything like that. Further, there is nothing known of female-female pederasty in ancient Rome, and the passage begins discussion of homosexuality with the female case. Finally, the twistedness of the men's actions is explicitly named as the fact that they abandoned the "natural function" of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another. The issue is not pagan idolatry, nor is it woman-to-girl nor man-to-boy pederasty, but it is exchange of man-to-woman relations for woman-to-woman and man-to-man relations. It couldn't be clearer, but progressives are desperate for biblical vindication. By the way, which party would be analogous to Christ and which would be analogous to the Church, in a homosexual so-called "marriage" (cf. Eph. 5)?
Repentant and even confused individuals need patient instruction, charitable encouragement, and compassionate ministry from the church, but flagrant distorters of God's Word call for derision and sharp rebuke at this point.
The BF&M succinctly lays out both the equality and the distinct roles of men and women in the home, according to a traditional complementarian perspective (and I think, a biblical one). While there are reasonable questions of exegesis and application about this or that particular passage, strong forms of egalitarianism seem to me to be engaged in mostly special pleading. The rotten fruits of evangelical feminism are evident in many of our homes and churches today, and it is a consistent observation that women thrive when men take responsibility and leadership in the home and church--not because of any inherent superiority or generally enhanced capability on the part of men, but because of God's design for distinct authority structures and roles.
Echoing the biblical perspective, children are regarded here as a blessing from conception, and parents are reminded to "teach children moral and spiritual values" and to teach them to "make choices based on biblical truth." As an evangelical, I wish the language in this section on parenting were more explicitly "evangelistic" (in the broad sense of gospel-centered), and as a paedobaptist who holds to some shade of the doctrine of "covenant succession," I wish the language in this section were more explicit about training children to live up to their baptismal heritage in the Christian faith--to "live up to their name of Christian" since the name of the Triune God has been placed upon them. But it's a credobaptistic document, after all, and it's still a biblical exhortation. I'm also glad it mentions life example as well as direct instruction.
Finally, the BF&M ends with the statement that children are to honor and obey their parents, in accord with the 5th Commandment. As sons and daughters of the Most High (by adoption and incorporation into Christ), we ought to obey our heavenly Father's instructions concerning the structure, roles, and regulations for family given in His Word. If we do, we will flourish spiritually, and--all else being equal--we will flourish in our families in every way.
Thanks for reading this series for over a decade (if anyone actually has), and I'll see you on "the other side" where I will continue here with either some further dogmatic theological reflection (on Lutheran confessional theology(?)), miniature articles leading up to the assurance book, covenant theology/continuity and discontinuity explorations, Lord's-Day-Sabbath and/or cessationism "debating with myself" type of posts, or systematic-theological word-vomiting through the various traditional loci. We shall see!
Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race.
The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.
Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate to their children God’s pattern for marriage. Parents are to teach their children spiritual and moral values and to lead them, through consistent lifestyle example and loving discipline, to make choices based on biblical truth. Children are to honor and obey their parents."
Over a decade later, I am completing this exercise of relatively light interaction with the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 via blog articles. I am not sure what is next. I have thought about doing a similar exercise with the Augsburg Confession (a Lutheran confessional document), however, I also have other writing projects in mind--a major work on assurance of salvation, some more formal work on physical health, and some highly unorganized blurting out of all my systematic-theological views at this time of my theological development.
In any case, I have enjoyed reading and interacting with each section of the BF&M. It is a faithful expression of key Christian beliefs, as well as a clear articulation of a few extra baptistic distinctives, with some of which I differ today. This last section on family is no exception. These truths have never been more under attack in our (at least my) American context than in these last two decades, so they need to be articulated and defended vigorously. Some of the language towards the end of this section rings a little strangely to my Presbyterian, paedobaptistic ears, but none of it is incorrect.
The BF&M here speaks of the family as a foundational institution, defines family, defines marriage, states marriage's main purposes, defines male and female roles in the home, declares children to be a blessing, and defines responsibilities of parents and children.
The family indeed was the first human "institution" of God, before the state (arguably established, at least in principial form, in Genesis 9), and even before the church (defined as a formal covenant "assembly" (established, in a sense, at Sinai)). Since slavery and indentured servitude are no longer part of our society, it is adequate to define a family or "household" as persons related by blood, marriage, or adoption. Marriage is a covenantal life-commitment between a man and a woman. Leaving aside more controversial debates such as New Testament rules about divorce and exception clauses (which the BF&M does not take sides on explicitly), affirming the biblical, traditional boundaries of marriage is extremely important given the cultural challenges of today.
It is at some level unnecessary to quibble about complex linguistics and archaeological arguments and their bearing on Romans 1:18ff, or 1st Corinthians 6:9-10, given the unchanged Old Testament presuppositions of Jesus and the New Testament writers regarding sexual ethics (see Matt. 5:28; nevermind the explicit, positive teaching of Jesus on marriage in Matthew 19 or Paul's exposition of the Christological meaning of marriage in Ephesians 5, both assuming and reaching back to the narrative of Genesis 1-2). However, the progressive and revisionist abuses of Romans 1 are particularly bad and deserve brief refutation.
To try and defend the idea that Paul was not in his writings condemning committed same-sex relationships of the sort we are mostly concerned with today, many revisionists argue that the passage in Romans 1 that seems on the surface to describe homosexuality as a negative result of divine judgment (which invites further judgment)--specifically, Romans 1:26-27--is describing either pederasty (abusive adult-child sexual relationships), homosexual practices only in the context of pagan temple worship, or homosexual practices contrary to certain individuals' "natural" heterosexual inclinations (i.e. the sin is "going against their own natural orientation"; in other words, it would be equally sinful for someone of homosexual orientation to go against their natural orientation by participating in heterosexual practices, on this view).
In Paul's, mind, however, "natural" is not a reference to subjective psychological experience but to the objective created order, founded on God's activity in Genesis 1 and 2. Moreover, the text explicitly states that the sinful "exchange" was of the "natural function", not of a natural "desire" or orientation or anything like that. Further, there is nothing known of female-female pederasty in ancient Rome, and the passage begins discussion of homosexuality with the female case. Finally, the twistedness of the men's actions is explicitly named as the fact that they abandoned the "natural function" of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another. The issue is not pagan idolatry, nor is it woman-to-girl nor man-to-boy pederasty, but it is exchange of man-to-woman relations for woman-to-woman and man-to-man relations. It couldn't be clearer, but progressives are desperate for biblical vindication. By the way, which party would be analogous to Christ and which would be analogous to the Church, in a homosexual so-called "marriage" (cf. Eph. 5)?
Repentant and even confused individuals need patient instruction, charitable encouragement, and compassionate ministry from the church, but flagrant distorters of God's Word call for derision and sharp rebuke at this point.
The BF&M succinctly lays out both the equality and the distinct roles of men and women in the home, according to a traditional complementarian perspective (and I think, a biblical one). While there are reasonable questions of exegesis and application about this or that particular passage, strong forms of egalitarianism seem to me to be engaged in mostly special pleading. The rotten fruits of evangelical feminism are evident in many of our homes and churches today, and it is a consistent observation that women thrive when men take responsibility and leadership in the home and church--not because of any inherent superiority or generally enhanced capability on the part of men, but because of God's design for distinct authority structures and roles.
Echoing the biblical perspective, children are regarded here as a blessing from conception, and parents are reminded to "teach children moral and spiritual values" and to teach them to "make choices based on biblical truth." As an evangelical, I wish the language in this section on parenting were more explicitly "evangelistic" (in the broad sense of gospel-centered), and as a paedobaptist who holds to some shade of the doctrine of "covenant succession," I wish the language in this section were more explicit about training children to live up to their baptismal heritage in the Christian faith--to "live up to their name of Christian" since the name of the Triune God has been placed upon them. But it's a credobaptistic document, after all, and it's still a biblical exhortation. I'm also glad it mentions life example as well as direct instruction.
Finally, the BF&M ends with the statement that children are to honor and obey their parents, in accord with the 5th Commandment. As sons and daughters of the Most High (by adoption and incorporation into Christ), we ought to obey our heavenly Father's instructions concerning the structure, roles, and regulations for family given in His Word. If we do, we will flourish spiritually, and--all else being equal--we will flourish in our families in every way.
Thanks for reading this series for over a decade (if anyone actually has), and I'll see you on "the other side" where I will continue here with either some further dogmatic theological reflection (on Lutheran confessional theology(?)), miniature articles leading up to the assurance book, covenant theology/continuity and discontinuity explorations, Lord's-Day-Sabbath and/or cessationism "debating with myself" type of posts, or systematic-theological word-vomiting through the various traditional loci. We shall see!
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