The Christian Family

by Herman Bavinck

Thanks to the influence of Mark Driscoll on evangelical attitudes towards marriage, the more recent trend has been to shift the focus towards sex, albeit still in the form of fairly crude “how to” guides.

Substantiate this?

Kuyper’s Anti-Revolutionary Party (a Christian political movement directed against the anti-Christian influence of the French Revolution on Dutch society).

To Augustine’s earlier conviction that our hearts remain restless until they find their rest in God, Bavinck adds that our minds remain unsatisfied until all our thoughts are brought back to the Trinity.

The “grace restores nature” idea is, at its core, an affirmation of nature. In the postfall world, grace does not remove our physicality, nor does it require us to live ascetic lives or disdain marriage. Rather, grace works to restore all of those things to their prefall beauty and holiness.

Is "grace restores nature" a controversial claim?

the Roman Catholic tradition (which rests on the belief that grace elevates, rather than simply restores, nature)

a healthy marriage will probably lean more on the Sermon on the Mount than on the Song of Solomon.

In a special sense a human person is a product of God; a person is his image and -likeness, his child and his race.

In this reality the man finds no basis for pride, for he received the woman, whom he desired, entirely apart from his own effort, apart from his own knowledge and volition, while in a deep sleep, which God had placed upon his soul and body.

God is the Creator of the human being, and simultaneously also the Inaugurator of sex and of sexual difference.

the first included the obligation to develop all the treasures that God had deposited in the earth; and the second involved the calling to protect the entire creation against every hostile power seeking to ruin the creation, and to preserve it from the tyranny of destructive forces.

For only in the human race is the image of God unfolded, and only in its dominion over the whole earth does the human race achieve its vocation and purpose. It is God himself who subdues the earth under his feet through the human race, and it is God himself who desires to display his own glory in the discovery of all of creation’s treasures.

Love for parents is surpassed in both intensity and extent by love for one’s wife. Such love is stronger than death.

He is the Creator of man and of woman, the Inaugurator of marriage, and the Sanctifier of matrimony. Each child born is the fruit of fellowship, and as such is also the fruit of divine blessing.

The authority of the father, the love of the mother, and the obedience of the child form in their unity the threefold cord that binds together and sustains all relationships within human society.

No man is complete without some feminine qualities, no woman is complete without some masculine qualities, and to both man and woman, the child is held up as an example (Matt. 18:3).

?

Shame is a sign of an awakened conscience, that human capacity which pronounces a person guilty and condemns him.

For human beings, conscience, shame, and clothing are intimately related. Together they serve to remind us of our God-created beginning and of our deepest fall; they presuppose our guilt and preserve our humanness; they simultaneously oppress us and liberate us. All three distinguish human beings from angels and animals, and provide human beings a unique position in creation.

she cannot fulfill her calling apart from leading a life of continual physical and spiritual pain.

Slavery and tyranny are the sins to which the mutual relationship of man and woman have been consigned and exposed since the violation of God’s ordinances.

the first man changed the name of his wife. She had earlier been called Manninne, because she was taken from the man and was given to him as a helpmeet. Now she will bear the name of Eve, mother of the living, because the woman gives way to the mother, and her assistance to the man is now rendered as the one who bears and nurtures children.

?

To Adam and Eve with their offspring, the holy family of Joseph, Mary, and the child form the divine counterpart.

?

Every marriage blends various psychological gifts and distinct physical strengths, becoming thereby a new source of a particular fullness of life.

glorifying nudity and elevating even the passions of the flesh into the service of deity—all

It becomes manifest what a world of unrighteousness lies hidden beneath the varnished exterior of a civilization.

Even the nature of sin and the manner of sinning demonstrate that one is a human being and was originally created not in the image of the ape, but in the image of God.

within the heart of husband and wife, of parents and children, he preserved the natural love that he had planted in that heart, and thereby opened a fountain of pure happiness and inestimable blessing for earthly life.

Great significance was attached to the blood relationship via the mother. The expression “sons of my mother” occurs several times (Gen. 43:29).

Family and wife, male and female slaves, ox and donkey were all his property (Exod. 20:17). The home, the entire family constituted one organic unit, with the patriarch as head.

Among Israel the wives participated in the days of rest and the feast days, in the sacrifices and temple singing.

The law did indeed permit polygamy and divorce; but these occurred because of the hardness of heart, conflicted with the essence of marriage, and were never the rule. Following the example of the patriarchs, kings and nobles later used that freedom, but ordinary citizens had only one wife.

in the Greek translation of the Old Testament the words from Genesis 2:24, they shall be one flesh, are translated as those two shall be one flesh—a translation adopted in the New Testament (Matt. 19:5; Mark 10:8; 1 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 5:31).

The sacredness of marriage comes to fullest expression in that it serves as an image of the covenant of fidelity between God and his people.

the Hebrew language does not even have a word for a female deity.

Mary occupies an entirely unique place in the history of the human race. She surpasses even the prophets and the apostles in esteem and honor; she alone was deigned to be mother of the Son of God; she is blessed and favored among women, and is called blessed by all the families of the earth.

After the ascension only Mary, the mother of -Jesus, and his brothers are mentioned. For all these reasons, it is not unlikely that Joseph died before the public ministry of -Jesus began.

he forgave her many sins because she had loved much [Luke 7:36–50].

one who even looks lustfully at a (married) woman has already committed adultery with her in his heart [Matt. 5:27–28]. Such a person, if it were up to him, would already have caused that married woman to commit adultery and have broken up her marriage.

-Jesus establishes the bond between husband and wife and just as importantly, between parents and children, as once again something unbreakable.

Just as here -Jesus is restoring in general the force of the fifth commandment, so too several times elsewhere he shows that he has a profound understanding of the tender relationship that exists between parents and children.

He permitted the children to come directly to him and laid his hand on them in blessing (Matt. 19:13–15). He puts them before his disciples as an example of simplicity, uprightness, and humility (Matt. 18:3), and he rejoices about the little ones who believe in his name (Matt. 18:5).

from the mouths of young children and nursing babies the Lord establishes strength and fashions praise for himself (Matt. 21:16).

The ordinance whose basis lies in creation is neither weakened nor destroyed by special revelation.

the husband must love his wife, live for her, and surrender himself to her, even as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, while the wife must be in submission to her husband in the Lord and as unto the Lord (Eph. 5:22–33; Col. 3:18–19; 1 Peter 3:1–7).

Does he go too far in saying the husband should "live for her?"

they often surpassed the men in studying the Scriptures and in the knowledge of the truth; they matched the men in terms of deeds of faith; many suffered martyrdom for confessing Christ and were held in high esteem by the church and were frequently admired by pagans.

From generation to generation and from century to century, the struggle against sin must be continued, and the spiritual and moral nurture must begin afresh with each person.

Marriage and the unmarried state were not related to each other, as Augustine said, like sickness and health, but certainly like temporal health and eternal immortality. Married life might be silver, according to the formulation of Chrysostom, but the unmarried state is golden.

For although most of the apostles, including Peter, were married, and though among the apostles in the early Christian church marriage was the rule, nevertheless the idea gained currency that the administration of spiritual things was incompatible with marriage and family life.

a “gateway of the devil,” as Tertullian called her; and with all these accusations men forgot to seek the guilt in their own weaknesses.

The immorality of the French royalty set the tone for many countries, and together with increasing unbelief, prepared the way for the great Revolution. Rousseau was its spiritual father; and as the preacher of an unbound religion of feeling, he himself lived with concubines and abandoned his children.

intellectual anarchy contributed in no small measure to the increase in immorality.