In this week’s WORLD column, I wrote about the need for young people to own for themselves the principles their parents taught them—in biblical truth above all.  That makes the choice of a Bible even more crucial, perhaps, than it was for younger kids.  Our free-market system ensures that where there’s demand there will be supply, so a diligent shopper will find no dearth of “Teen” and “Student” Bibles out there.  The problem may be sorting out which is best for your own young adults.  I have my own opinions but I don’t know your kids, so individual preferences and needs must be taken into account—you might even ask them!  Today’s post is a tour of readily-available titles (I found them all at Mardel), for barely-teens to the college- and career-ready.

First, consider whether your teen needs a Study Bible, Devotional Bible, or Reading Bible.  What’s the difference?  A study Bible is designed to help the reader engage intellectually with the text, by providing theological and textual notes, cross-references, maps and charts, timelines, and anything else that will help clarify the meaning. Devotional Bibles are designed to help the reader engage emotionally with the text.  They’re usually slanted toward the reader’s age group, interest, and/or demographic (have you seen Zondervan’s new NIV Homeschool Moms Bible?) and contain lots of sidebars with encouraging  thoughts, leading questions, and key verses.  “Life Application” Bibles tend to be a blend of study and devotional.  Everything else falls into the category of reading Bible: just the text with little supplementary material (besides the omnipresent “weights and measures”—does anybody actually refer to those?).  Some rearrange the text in chronological order and some, like the ESV Literary Study Bible, include notes to enhance “just reading.”  At the teen age, I would personally lean more toward study Bibles than devotional, though again, it depends on the individual.  And if the budget allows, consider buying one for just reading.

Read the whole article here.

Several of my friends have recently suffered miscarriages. They endure the anguish of feeling their bodies begin to change to make room for a growing baby only to lose the child. I, too, have experienced it—four times. At first we thought perhaps I had a problem with fertility. It took us a year to get pregnant and then seven weeks to lose the baby. I got pregnant quickly again and miscarried at ten weeks. Eventually I had a sweet baby boy. After him I miscarried two more times and then had my girl.

This Mother’s Day may come as yet another reminder to women everywhere that they don’t have something they desire. Another year of miscarriages, infertility, or even waiting for a child through the adoption process. Whatever the unfulfilled desire, it tugs at your heart and plagues your mind.

When I thought about writing this article, I recalled a new friend who recently asked me for advice. So instead of an article, I wrote a note to my friends and anyone else God may want to read in on the conversation. So I pray you would be blessed by this note as well.

You can read Newbell’s “note” here.

Despite the growing popularity of the ascetic movement, however, not everyone believed that sanctification needed to involve sexual renunciation. Although by the end of the fourth century celibacy was viewed by many as a superior path to favor with God, not everyone agreed. One Roman churchman, a monk named Jovinian, challenged this emerging consensus and articulated the belief that marriage and celibacy were equal in God’s sight. He critiqued not only celibacy as superior in God’s sight, but also the hierarchy of merit that had emerged in patristic soteriology. Though most of Jovinian’s work is lost, his ideas challenged the church to think deeply about the institution of marriage.

“Marriage replenishes the earth, virginity fills Paradise” (2). So wrote Jerome (c. 347-420), the Bible scholar and Mascetic of Bethlehem, in the last decade of the fourth century. He argued that marriage fulfills God’s plan to populate the earth, as Genesis 1 and 2 explain. Virginity, however, has a special place of importance in the mission of the church. In making this argument, he did not intend to denigrate marriage. “If I have called virginity gold, I have spoken of marriage as silver.” Furthermore, he argued, Jesus’ parable of the soils teaches us that while all believers bear fruit from the same soil because of the same act of sowing, the amount of fruit differs widely—some a hundred, some sixty, and some thirtyfold. Thus while marriage bears fruit for Christ, virginity bears more (3). In his writing on virginity and marriage, Jerome made clear that he considered virginity to be worthy of greater merit in heaven than marriage.

Jerome was not alone in his conviction that virginity bears more eternal fruit than marriage. Many contemporaries shared this opinion. Augustine (354-430), bishop of Hippo in North Africa, stated regarding a vow of life-long virginity that “there is a special splendor there . . . that is not bestowed on everyone who lives for- ever, but only on certain ones.” While marriage should not be condemned, it also should not be made equal to the gift of celibacy (4). Siricius, who served as bishop of Rome from 384-399, made a similar statement in a letter addressed to several western bishops: “Assuredly we receive without scorn the vows of those marriages which we assist at with the veil, but virgins, for whose existence marriage is necessary, as being devoted to God, we honor more highly” (5). Ambrose (c. 339-397), the bishop of Milan, echoed that opinion in his reply letter to Siricius, “Marriage is good: through it the means of human continuity are found. But virginity is better: through it are attained the inheritance of a heavenly kingdom and a continuity of heavenly rewards”(6).

Jerome wrote his treatise on virginity and marriage in 393 at the request of some friends in Rome because of the popularity of a new treatise that challenged popular thought on celibacy and marriage. The new treatise was written by a Roman churchman named Jovinian, whom Jerome called “the Epicurus of Christianity” (7). According to Siricius, Jovinian and his followers spoke at church meetings about marriage and celibacy and garnered a significant following (8). Jerome marveled that Jovinian’s followers did not come only from the married laity, who might understandably be attracted to his arguments. Indeed, some clergymen and monks who were devoted to a celibate life were also convinced. Jovinian’s teachings also led to changes in his lifestyle. He was himself devoted to celibacy, but based on negative comments made by Jerome, Jovinian must have allowed himself the indulgence of eating finer foods, taken greater care in his appearance, associated freely with women, and made use of the public baths. Jerome considered all such activity to be contrary to the ascetic ideal (9).

Several responses to Jovinian’s teachings came rather quickly. Jerome, though living in Bethlehem, wrote Against Jovinian and sent the treatise to his contacts in Rome. Pope Siricius responded too, excommunicating Jovinian and his followers as “promoters of the new heresy and blasphemy,” and notifying a number of western bishops of this decision (10). Ambrose, in response to Bishop Siricius’ letter, likewise condemned Jovinian and likened his views to those of the Manicheans (11). The condemnations of Siricius and Ambrose must have come after Jerome received the request to write Against Jovinian, because Jerome proceeded with his argument as if the matter had not been resolved by the Church. Later in the year 393, however, and because his own treatise against Jovinian had raised concerns, Jerome wrote another letter (“Letter 48”) defending his own arguments in which he referenced the official condemnation. Finally, in 398, Jovinian was condemned by the emperor to be beaten with leaden whips and exiled to the island of Boa. His other conspirators were likewise sentenced to exile on “solitary islands situated at a great distance from each other” (12). Jovinian’s challenge to the consensus regarding marriage and sexuality had led to the branding of heresy, the sentence of excommunication, torture, and finally exile.

Despite Ambrose’s accusation, Jovinian’s teaching was not Manichean, but it did present a significant biblical and theological challenge to the teaching regarding marriage, sexuality, and sanctification that had become popular at the end of the fourth century. Though his work has been lost, Jerome preserved a substantial amount of his argument in Against Jovinian. In this response, Jerome neatly summarized his adversary’s assertions in four propositions. First, Jovinian argued, “Virgins, widows, and married women, who have been once passed through the laver of Christ, if they are on a par in other respects, are of equal merit.” Second, he asserted, “They who with full assurance of faith have been born again in baptism, cannot be overthrown by the devil.” Third, he explained, “There is no difference between absti- nence from food, and its reception with thanksgiving.” Finally, according to Jerome, Jovinian stated, “There is one reward in the kingdom of heaven for all who have kept their baptismal vow” (13).

THE FIRST PROPOSITION

Jerome’s refutation makes evident that Jovinian’s assertions regarding marriage, sexuality, and sanctification were heavily occupied with presenting a defense of the goodness of marriage based on his interpretation of Scripture (14). His defense began in Genesis 2, where God himself declares, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh” (Gen 2:24).” Lest anyone should undermine the significance of this statement because it is merely Old Testament teaching which has been superseded by the gospel, Jovinian pointed out that Jesus himself confirmed the continued significance of marriage when he declared, “What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” Because Jesus has affirmed the institution which God ordained in the Garden of Eden, his command in Genesis 1:28 still applies to the Church today: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.” Based upon the evidence Jerome provided, Jovinian believed both that the creation mandate was still fundamental for the Church today and that it demonstrates that marriage still plays a part in God’s plan for humanity which is equal to celibacy.

Jovinian illustrated the important role of marriage in Scripture by demonstrating how many saints of the Old and New Testaments were married. He listed all of the patriarchs between Seth and Noah and commented that Enoch walked with God and was taken up into heaven. Noah and his family were the only ones saved from the flood, though no doubt many single people of marriageable age were condemned. After the flood, he pointed out, the creation mandate was reissued. He further mentions Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Samson, Barak, Deborah, Jael, Boaz, Ruth, Jesse, David, Elijah, Elisha, Josiah, and Huldah. In the New Testament, he mentioned Zachariah, Elizabeth, Peter, and the rest of the Apostles. Jovinian’s point in each case was to show that individuals who performed meritorious deeds for the Lord or who played an important role in the history of redemption were married. In some cases, the individuals he cited might be just as heavily criticized for their misdeeds as praised for the important role they play. Not all of Jovinian’s examples seem to work in his favor, and Jerome did not miss an opportunity to point these instances out. Nevertheless, Jovinian believed that both the Old and the New Testament present solid evidence that married people were often favored by God and served vital roles in his plan.

Furthermore, Jovinian argued, the New Testament contains plenty of instruction validating the goodness of marriage. As Jerome explained, he continued his argument by quoting Paul’s injunction that younger widows marry and bear children (1 Tim 5:14), that a widow is free to marry (1 Cor 7:39), and that women are saved through childbearing (1 Cor 7:29). Furthermore, the author of Hebrews asserted that marriage is honorable and the marriage bed should be undefiled (Heb 13:4). In Jovinian’s opinion, all of this evidence should help put in context Paul’s instructions in 1 Corinthians 7 regarding sexuality, marriage, and remarriage: “Surely we shall hear no more of the famous Apostolic utterance, ‘And they who have wives as though they had them not.’” This passage from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians was often used to defend the position that celibacy is superior, but in Jovinian’s view that interpretation of Paul’s words was misguided. He concluded, “All of this makes it clear that in forbidding to marry, and to eat food which God created for use, you have consciences seared as with a hot iron, and are followers of the Manichaeans” (15). After explaining New Testament teaching, Jovinian proceeded to present evidence from secular authors in favor of the valued place of marriage, demonstrating that the ascetical views popular in his day had never been accepted in the world and were “a dogma against nature” (16). Jovinian’s opinion that marriage and celibacy were of equal value in attaining merit in God’s sight was grounded in his belief that God’s creation mandate continues to apply to the church. He bolstered this position by citing New Testament teaching plainly asserting the continued importance of marriage, and concluded with examples demonstrating that marriage has been valued and honored in the secular world.

THE REST OF JOVINIAN’S ARGUMENT

Jovinian went further, arguing over the doctrine of baptism, the merit of abstinence, and nature of the believer’s final reward. Jerome allowed his response to the first proposition an entire book by itself, while he dealt with the final three propositions together in one book which is shorter than the first. Though Jerome spent far more time interacting with Jovinian’s view of marriage and sexuality, the other three propositions are not ancillary issues. Inevitably all four propositions tie together to present a unified argument. Jerome probably did not grasp every nuance of this argument, and if so, he missed something significant.

According to Jerome’s opening summary of his adversary’s propositions, Jovinian asserted that “they who with full assurance of faith have been born again in baptism, cannot be overthrown by the devil.” As he took up this second proposition, Jerome altered the wording of the proposition and argued that those who have been baptized can be “tempted,” not “overthrown” as he initially recorded (17). Jerome provided ample evidence from the Old and New Testaments that believers can fall into sin and must guard against it. This, however, was probably not an adequate response to Jovinian’s proposition. There is evidence that Jovinian also stated that believers can fall into sin, and when they do they must repent. Rather, Jovinian seems to have been arguing that something significant occurs in the life of the believer when he or she is baptized, something that goes beyond peccability.

Not knowing exactly what Jovinian said here, it is impossible to reconstruct his argument infallibly, but Jerome probably got closer to the heart of the issue in his closing comment on this proposition: “We flatter ourselves on the ground of our baptism, which though it put away the sins of the past, cannot keep us for the time to come, unless the baptized keep their hearts with all diligence.” This quote reveals a concern not simply over the presence of sin, but over the future state of believers. Jovinian evidently argued that baptism, administered “with full assurance of faith,” places believers in a state in which the blessings they experience as a result are not diminished by the presence of sin. Jovinian did believe that believers could sin, but this sin will not remove the blessings that flow from baptism. In other words, Jovinian argued for what historian David Hunter called the final indefectibility of believers rather than their per- sonal impeccability (18). Those who are baptized into the Church are in a permanent state of grace.

Regarding the third point, Jerome provided more information about Jovinian’s teaching than he had about the second. Jovinian argued that abstention from certain foods was unscriptural. Again, he found significance in the doctrine of creation. God created humanity and gave him dominion over all of the creatures of the earth, and then after the flood God gave him the right to eat not only plants, but also animals as well. In the New Testament, Paul teaches that all foods are clean if they are eaten with thanksgiving (Rom 14:20). In fact, Jovinian continued, Jesus himself drank wine and ate meat at feasts. He concluded regarding his opponents, “In abstaining from meats they please their own fancy” (19).

Jovinian’s fourth proposition was that “there is one reward in the kingdom of heaven for all who have kept their baptismal vow.” As Jerome took up his refutation of this proposition, he explained that Jovinian was argu- ing that there are only two classes of people—believers and unbelievers. Jovinian referenced Jesus’ teaching regarding the sheep and the goats (Mat 25:31-46), Jesus’ statement to the Pharisees that their father was the devil ( John 8:44), the judgment of humanity that occurred in the flood, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Regarding Sodom and Gomorrah, Jovinian stated, “There is one salvation for those who are released, one destruction for those who stay behind” (20). Jovinian rejected the idea that believers should be divided into classes, some more spiritual than others, because the New Testament repeatedly emphasizes that all believers partake of the body and blood of Christ ( John 6:56), that the Holy Spirit indwells all believers (1 Cor 6:19), and that the Church itself is one. For these reasons, the common teaching that an ascetic lifestyle produces greater reward should be rejected. All believers possess the presence of Christ and are part of the same body. Therefore all experience the same reward.

The common thread running through propositions one, three, and four, and in reality shedding light on the second as well, was Jovinian’s concern over baptism. Jerome dealt with each proposition independently, but failed to acknowledge or refute the ecclesiological argument that was central to Jovinian’s thesis (21). Marriage and celibacy are of equal weight in the sight of God because all baptized believers possess the same gift—the permanent presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, which has been given to the Church. All believers will experience the same reward of eternal life because all possess the same fruit of baptism—the permanent presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, which has been given to the Church. Also, because all believers have been baptized in Christ, none has any need to abstain from certain kinds of food (which God created as good). They have no value in attaining extra merit before God. In Jovinian’s view, the work God accomplished in baptism brought about a state of grace in which the quest for merit through abstaining from food and sex was unnecessary. Beyond that, abstaining from the good gifts God created and gave to humanity ran contrary to the Bible’s teaching on creation—which Jovinian argued still held relevance for the New Testament believer. Jovinian’s defense of the important place of marriage in the church and his denial of the supremacy of celibacy did not stand alone. It rested within a larger argument against the need for a hierarchy of merit within the soteriological system of the church.

Bishops Siricius of Rome and Ambrose of Milan both responded to Jovinian’s teaching, but only Jerome provided a full response to his arguments. Like Jovinian’s other respondents, Jerome asserted the superiority of virginity over marriage as a path toward eternal merit. In the process of making his case, however, he presented a view of marriage that seemed to go further than placing it at a secondary status. In fact, even some of Jerome’s friends in Rome believed that he had articulated views that actually undermined the goodness of marriage. Because much of Jovinian’s argumentation was biblical in nature, much of Jerome’s response was exegetical, beginning with an analysis of 1 Corinthians 7.

JEROME ON 1 CORINTHIANS 7

Jerome’s choice to use 1 Corinthians 7 in order to make his case for the superiority of celibacy was not unusual. During the Reformation, as Martin Luther made his case for the superiority of marriage over celibacy, he wrote an expository treatise on this chapter. He explained his rationale: “My reason for this choice is that this very chapter, more than all the other writings of the entire Bible, has been twisted back and forth to condemn the married state and at the same time to give a strong appearance of sanctity to the dangerous and peculiar state of celibacy” (22). Luther recognized that advocates of celibacy frequently used Paul’s argument in this passage to support their cause, though in his opinion they were twisting Paul’s words. Peter Brown, writ- ing on the renunciation of sex in ancient Christianity, also noted the importance of this chapter for those who exalted celibacy, but stated that by using arguments that were not clear, Paul “left a fatal legacy to future ages” (23). Paul’s words in this passage, even if wrongly interpreted, were used by many to construct a view of sexuality that led to the exaltation of celibacy. Jerome’s exegesis in this treatise would make an important contribution to the literature on the subject.

Interacting with the very first verse of the chapter, Jerome made a case for celibacy that in the opinion of many put marriage in a poor light. He quoted Paul’s statement, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman,” and offered the following analysis: “If it is good not to touch a woman, it is bad to touch one: for there is no opposite to goodness but badness. But if it be bad and the evil is pardoned, the reason for the concession is to prevent worse evil.” The concession Jerome referred to was Paul’s statement in verse two that “because of immoralities, let each man have his own wife” (New American Standard Bible). In Jerome’s opinion, Paul followed up an important statement regarding the exercise of human sexuality with a pastoral concession: because of the reality of sexual temptation, some people will need to marry in order to prevent sexual sin outside of marriage. However, he argued, “Do away with fornication, and he will not say “let each man have his own wife.” In his judgment, something that is allowed only to prevent something worse from happening “has only a slight degree of goodness.” Jerome presented the picture that marriage is only valuable in order to prevent fornication (24).

Even within marriage, in Jerome’s opinion, sex is counterproductive to one’s spiritual growth. In 7:2 Paul stated that each man should “have” his own wife, which Jerome interpreted as indicating sexual activity, not simply marriage. He reconstructed Paul’s argument thus: each man should have sex with his wife, whom it would be good not to touch at all, but rather treat as a sister. However, since they married before he became a believer, the man should give his wife “her due” as a concession. Even within marriage, Jerome believed, sexual activity is not best.

It hinders prayer as well. This, he argued, was Paul’s point in verse five, in which the apostle stated that the married couple should abstain for a time and come back together by mutual consent. Paul made this argument, Jerome asserted, because “as often as I render my wife her due, I cannot pray.” Since Paul plainly instructed believers in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to pray always, this advice to abstain from sex in order to pray must indicate that sex hinders prayer. Otherwise why would the apostle suggest abstention? Though Paul clearly permitted marriage and sex within marriage, Jerome believed this was not what he thought best: “The Apostle’s wish is one thing, his pardon another.” In Jerome’s judgment, Paul thought celibacy best, and if one was already married, celibacy within marriage was best, though sex with one’s spouse was a pardonable offense.

Despite this negative assessment of marriage, Jerome believed the institution to be God-given. Paul stated in 7:7 that he wished all men to be as he was, but that God gives each his own gift. Jerome granted that “even marriage is a gift from God, but between gift and gift there is great diversity.” Why would the apostle make a distinction between gifts if one is not superior? The gift of virginity is superior, though not everyone is given that gift. Even in saying that marriage is God-given, though, Jerome had difficulty speaking of it as good. He said, “I suspect the goodness of that thing which is forced into the position of being only the lesser of two evils. What I want is not a smaller evil, but a thing absolutely good” (25).

This unavoidably negative assessment of marriage was enhanced by his discussion of remarriage. At the end of 1 Corinthians 7, Paul states that a wife is bound to her husband as long as she lives, but is free to marry if he dies. However, the apostle states, “She is happier if she remains as she is,” (7:40, NAS). Jerome saw the same logic at work here that he believed was present early in chapter 7. The apostle believed that it is only advisable to marry because of the danger of fornication. Jerome argued that this applies to widows as well as virgins: “it is better to know a single husband, though he be a second or third, than to have many paramours.” Jerome’s next statement reveals much: “That is, it is more tolerable for a woman to pros- titute herself to one man than to many” (26). He believed that sexual activity is sinful, whether within marriage or without. Commitment to one spouse within marriage, however, prevented worse evils.

JEROME’S THEOLOGY OF SEXUALITY

Jovinian had grounded his positive view of sexuality and marriage theologically by arguing that sexuality and marriage were originally created by God and given to humanity. Jerome denied that sexuality and marriage were good gifts given by God for humans in paradise. He asserted that Adam and Eve were virgins in Paradise and were married only after they were cast out of the garden. Sex, therefore, was not practiced in the Garden of Eden. What then of the statement that the two shall become one flesh (Gen 2:24)? Jerome referenced Paul’s statement on marriage in Ephesians 5:22-33 that marriage is a picture of Christ’s relationship with the Church. Jesus, though, in the flesh is a virgin. If the husband is to love his wife as Christ loves the Church, he must love his wife in chastity. Jerome furthered his argument by reflecting on the imago dei, arguing that in Christ humans are remade into the image of God. However, in Christ there is neither male, nor female (Gal 3:28). Therefore, “the link of marriage is not found in the image of the creator” (27). Neither marriage nor sex existed in the Garden of Eden, and sexuality has no relationship to the image of God.

Jovinian’s other key theological argument was that the Church still bore the necessity to fulfill the creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply. Given the fact that Jerome denied that God gave sex or marriage to humanity in the garden, explaining the existence and relevance of this mandate was important for his argument. He used the analogy of harvesting trees to explain God’s command. God first planted the wood so he would later have trees to harvest. The command to be fruitful and multiply served to populate the earth so that humanity, once given the gift of life, could begin to seek for eternal life. In this context, Jerome stated, “Marriage replenishes the earth, virginity fills Paradise” (28). Now that Jesus has come and the time is short, we have a different command given us by “A Virgin Savior” (29). For Jerome, virginity has replaced the creation mandate. It is preparation for eternity. After all, humans can be married only during this life. They will be virgins, however, for eternity. He summarized, “For marriage ends at death; virginity thereafter begins to wear the crown” (30). Though marriage was allowed because of the danger of fornication, celibacy was of greater value in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Despite the fact that Jerome did not fully appreciate the importance of Jovinian’s ecclesiological argument for his overall thesis, he did find the consequences of his adversary’s views troubling. Jovinian had denied the value of abstaining from sex and from food, argued against the hierarchy of merit, and claimed (according to Jerome), to be without sin after baptism. Jerome believed his adversary had constructed a system in which a believer could conduct himself in any manner he wished without consequences. Moreover, he had left no place for asceticism at all. Jerome complained, “If we are all to be equal in heaven, in vain do we humble ourselves here that we may be greater there.” He was convinced that the Scriptures were replete with examples promoting the hierarchy of merit. He did not seem to understand that Jovinian was not rejecting virginity in order to promote vice, but rather was articulating an entirely different understanding of the doctrine of salvation—one that had a different view of justification as a result of the efficacy of baptism, and in the process found a different place for marriage within the life of the church. Jerome had constructed a system in which sex had no place at all—except to be forgiven—and in which one who seeks righteousness must follow the path of strict self denial.

 AGAINST JOVINIAN
The response to Jovinian was swift and definitive. A synod in Rome, led by Bishop Siricius, excommunicated him. Ambrose, leading a synod in Milan, the city where the emperor resided, did likewise, and the emperor eventually exiled him. Supporters continued to circulate his ideas for a while, but his writings did not survive antiquity and are only known to us through Jerome’s refutation. Jerome’s views, however, continued to draw a response from churchmen even up to the time of the Reformation.

Against Jovinian drew a strong response in Rome as soon as it was put into circulation. Peter Brown commented that it “acted as an inspiration and an irritant.” There were some militants who agreed with Jerome in looking askance at marriage (31). A group of “holy brothers at Rome,” probably fellow ascetics, were the ones who had requested the treatise initially. However, an old contact of Jerome’s, a senator named Pammachius who had been involved in the Jovinian controversy within the church, was the one who became concerned over the negative reaction of the public toward the treatise. In an effort to spare further controversy and prevent Jerome unnecessary grief, he withdrew as many copies from circulation as possible and wrote to Jerome seeking clarification on some issues raised by the treatise. His efforts proved futile, however (32). By the time his letter reached Jerome, the ascetic of Bethlehem had already entertained visitors from Rome who read to him passages from his own trea- tise which they considered troubling. Jerome did provide a substantial response to Pammachius’s letter, which he intended as a defense of the treatise, but he did not retract a single statement. To the charge that he had denigrated marriage, Jerome insisted repeatedly that he asserted the goodness of marriage. Virginity was simply a better path toward merit (33). Those who sought a more subtly worded response were disappointed.

One contemporary unknown to posterity disagreed with Jerome’s assessment of the place of marriage and sexuality. The Roman churchman known to us as “Ambrosiaster” expressed very different views on the nature of human sexuality, its relationship with the doctrine of creation, and the place of sex in the life of the clergy. Unlike Jerome, Ambrosiaster taught that human sexuality was part of God’s original blessing to humanity before Adam and Eve’s fall into sin. Moreover, neither the Fall nor its consequences could be used to denigrate sexual relations between husband and wife. In fact, the mandate to be fruitful and multiply is still an important part of God’s mission for humanity, he argued. Because of this, sex within marriage has an important place in the church. However, in keeping with the practice of the Old Testament priesthood to abstain from sexual relations during their period of ministry, Christian priests should abstain from sexual relations because they approach the altar regularly. Even in arguing for a celibate clergy, however, Ambrosiaster differed from Jerome, who had soteriological reasons for abstention (34). Since he published his works anonymously, though, maintained a low profile, and never offered a full and systematic treatment of the institution of marriage, Ambrosiaster’s work, while significant, left little lasting impact.

The contribution of Augustine, however, is another story. Augustine wrote his treatises On the Excellence of Marriage and Holy Virginity around 401, about eight years after Jerome’s treatise. As David Hunter pointed out, the Jovinian controversy allowed Augustine the opportunity to articulate his theology of marriage and sexuality that had begun to develop in earlier writings (35). His intention, stated plainly in Retractations, was to counteract the continued support Jovinian enjoyed even after his exile. Augustine was particularly concerned that Jovinian’s supporters boasted that Jovinian could not be answered by praising marriage, but only by censuring it (36). In response Augustine published his own defenses of marriage and virginity, treatises that articulated the goodness of marriage while maintaining the superiority of celibacy in earning merit before God.

Augustine opened his treatise by distinguishing himself from Jerome, as Ambrosiaster had, regarding human sexuality. In Augustine’s opinion, God created humanity as “a social entity” producing all humans, including both sexes, out of one man. His intention was to create the bond of kinship, and he created a strong union in husband and wife, which produces children as its fruit. Though he conceded at this time that he did not know how human procreation occurred before the Fall, he was confident procreation was part of God’s intention. Even after the Fall, the procreation mandate continued to be good, being fulfilled by the Old Testament Patriarchs without sin. In fact, he argued, they never let their natural enjoyment of it proceed to the point of “irrational and sinful passion.” Further, they possessed the additional motive that the messiah would come from their seed. Human sexuality, therefore, was created good and had its place in God’s plan (37).

He also articulated three reasons why marriage is good, the first of which is producing children. As he had explained regarding the original created state of humanity, God created humans to bond and to produce fruit from their union. Therefore, procreation is good, and when husband and wife engage in sexual relations for the purpose of procreation, that act is good as well. Secondly, Augustine argued, marriage is good because it produces faithfulness. Husband and wife are faithful to one another and to God by keeping themselves from sexual relations with other people and by making themselves available to one another in order to avoid immorality. These efforts help to promote chastity. Thirdly, Augustine spoke of marriage as a sacrament similar in nature to the sacrament of ordination. Both are irrevocable, both are instituted for a purpose, and both bring blessing (38).

Despite believing in the goodness of human sexuality and of the institution of marriage, Augustine differed with Jovinian and agreed in part with Jerome by asserting that virginity was still superior. Like Jovinian, Augustine believed that the patriarchs of the Old Testament ought to be commended for their faithfulness in marriage. They were producing the seed from which the messiah would spring. The messiah, however, has come, and in this present age “it is certainly better and holier not to set out to have children physically, and so to keep oneself free from any activity of that kind, and to be subject spiritually to only one man, Christ” (39). Virginity is still superior, though virgins are not necessarily more holy simply because they have dedicated themselves to virginity. They must live in obedience to God in other respects as well. Augustine certainly disagreed with Jovinian over the place of virginity with respect to merit, but he did not agree with Jerome completely. He declared emphatically, “Therefore marriage and fornication are not two evils, one worse than the other, but marriage and abstinence are two good things, one better than the other” (40). This comment was clearly directed at Jerome, who despite his affirmation that marriage was God-given still spoke of it as less than good.

In the generations that followed, Augustine’s writings became massively influential. The theologians of the medieval era valued adherence to the authority of the orthodox teachers of the Church because they were viewed as having been faithful to the teachings of the apostles. They were certainly capable of independent critical reflection, but typically shunned theological novelty. Medieval libraries were filled with collections and compilations of the works of patristic authors, most notably Augustine (41). The North African church father was often the starting point for theological discussion, even if his name was never mentioned. In this context, Augustine’s treatment of the sacraments became the standard basis for reflection during the middle ages. Thus, his treatment on marriage was often a key point of reference.

Jerome’s Against Jovinian did not disappear, however. Despite the uneven reception of this work in Rome during Jerome’s lifetime, he was a prolific and widely respected author who had produced the Vulgate, commentaries on Scripture, biographies of famous ascetics (Lives of Illustrious Men), and numerous controversial writings. In fact, as patristic scholar Rousseu has pointed out, “his letters and Lives offer the most sig- nificant corpus of ascetic literature in the West” during this period (42). Against Jovinian had originally found an audience that received its message warmly, and this was no less true later in history. This is evident from a comment by Martin Luther, who because of his own views on marriage was regarded as a new Jovinian. Luther complained regarding his adversaries,

Indeed, just as one disputation gives rise to another, these ungodly people will shout that I am Jovinian and they will bring Jerome’s argument against Jovinian, in which he defended celibacy, to bear against me. They will think that I have never read Jerome. They think that it is enough just to have read him; they never think it neces- sary to form some opinion about what they have read (43).

Luther’s adversaries responded to his critique of celibacy by citing the words of Jerome. They were aware of them and accepted them, but in Luther’s opinion did so without any apparent critical reflection.

Others of the Reformation era did reflect critically upon Against Jovinian. Erasmus, the Catholic humanist, embraced the superiority of marriage even before Luther did and echoed some of Jovinian’s arguments found in Jerome’s refutation. He criticized Jerome, who in his opinion abused marriage. His efforts to exalt marriage brought him censure from French Catholic theologians (44). Luther’s associate, Philip Melanchton, roundly criticized Jerome, whose abusive language about marriage he found “by no means worthy of a Christian” (45). John Calvin, while likewise rejecting Jerome’s ideas, was more gracious, concluding that Jerome suffered from the defect of allowing himself to be “hurried away into great extravagancies” during the heat of conflict (46). Jerome’s views on marriage and celibacy, then, were well known and found both enthusiastic admirers as well as ardent detractors—both Protestant and Catholic.

Jovinian, on the other hand, was well known as a heretic, and his arguments recorded by Jerome were public knowledge. The Council of Trent, condemning both the Protestant Reformers and the views of Jovinian, declared, “If anyone says that the married state excels the state of virginity or celibacy, and that it is better and happier to be united in matrimony than to remain in virginity or celibacy, let him be anathema” (47). The Catholic Church stood by its condemnation of Jovinian, despite the protests by reformers on both sides. However, despite some obvious affinities with Jovinian, Luther refused to identify himself with the ancient Roman’s views. He stated, “I myself do not know what Jovinian really meant. Perhaps he did not handle the argument properly. What I do know, however, is that Jerome has not handled it properly” (48).

This, in the end, is Jovinian’s legacy. His teaching elicited a violent reaction from Jerome that many have considered dismissive of the very institution of marriage. His basic thesis is clear and intriguing and some of his arguments might be compelling, but in the end one can know only part of his theology of marriage and sexuality. Martin Luther was wise not to identify himself with a man whose arguments have come to us incomplete. Jovinian was a man who stood against the consensus of his generation on celibacy and the hierarchy of merit and who paid the price for it. That mantle was picked up again during the Reformation by reformers on both sides, but they could not claim much of Jovinian’s work for themselves. Their views on righteousness before God, justification, baptism, marriage, and sexuality emerged largely from their own interaction with Scripture, not from Jovinian, though he evidently touched on each of these issues in a way that led to his condemnation.

ENDNOTES

(1) For background on secular views regarding marriage and sexuality as well as the development of Christian views during the centuries prior to the Jovinian Controversy, see Peter Brown, Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Ancient Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Richard Finn, Asceticism in the Graeco-Roman World, Key Themes in Ancient History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); David G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy, Oxford Early Christian Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 87-129.

(2) Jerome, “Against Jovinianus,” 1.16, in St. Jerome: Letters and Select Works, A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, trans. by W. H. Freemantle, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, vol. 6 (Grand Rapids: Eerd- mans, 1554), 359-360.

(3) Jerome, “Letter XLVIII,” 3, in St. Jerome: Letters and Select Works, A Select Library of Nicene and Post- Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, trans. by W. H. Freemantle, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1554), 6:67.

(4) Augustine, “Holy Virginity,” 14.14, 19.19, in Marriage and Virginity, The Works of St. Augustine for the 21st Century, trans. by Ray Kearney, ed. John E. Rotelle (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 75, 78.

(5) Siricius, “The Letter of Pope Siricius to the Church of Milan,” in The Letters of S. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, trans. not indicated ( James Parker and Co.: London, 1881), 281.

(6) Ambrose, “Letter 44,” in Saint Ambrose: Letters 1-91, The Fathers of the Church, A New Translation, trans. Mary Melchior Beyenka (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1954), 26:226.

(7) Jerome, “Against Jovinianus, 1.1, in St. Jerome: Letters and Select Works, 346.

(8) Siricius, “The Letter of Pope Siricius to the Church of Milan,” 282.

(9) Jerome’s own advice on how to live the ascetic life is found in a letter to a young virgin named Eustochium. Here Jerome advised a young aristocratic woman who has chosen the life of an ascetic to avoid eating fine foods, avoid the company of married aristocratic women, prefer only the company of female ascetics, and even avoid the speech patterns that he viewed as pretentious which were popular among wealthy Roman women. See Jerome, “Letter XXII.” Jovinian’s conduct obviously did not follow this pattern of ascetic living, which led to the epithet Jerome gave him, “the Epicurus of Christianity,” who is “wanton- ing in his gardens with his favourites of both sexes,” (Against Jovinianus 2.36). J. N. D. Kelly is surely cor- rect to interpret Jovinian’s actions more neutrally than Jerome has presented them. See J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (London: Duckworth, 1975), 180.

(10) Siricius, “The Letter of Pope Siricius to the Church of Milan.”

(11) Ambrose, “Letter 44,” in Saint Ambrose: Letters, 230. Manicheans held to a docetic Christology, denying that Jesus took on flesh. In Ambrose’s letter to Siricius, Ambrose focused his attention upon defending the physical virginity of Mary, even after the process of giving birth to Jesus, a doctrine known as virginitas in partu. Jovinian denied this teaching, and in refuta- tion Ambrose accused him of Manichaeism. David G. Hunter, who has written the definitive work on the Jovinian controversy, argued that Ambrose’s accusation was “a rather obvious and deliberate distortion of Jovinian’s teaching.” There is no evidence that Jovinian denied the humanity of Jesus. On the other hand,

Jovinian’s concerns about the distortion of the value of virginity provided clear and sufficient motivation for him to question the validity of the virginitas in partu teaching. See David G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity, 22-24.

(12) Quoted in David G. Hunter, 243.

(13) Jerome, “Against Jovinianus,” 1.3. Jerome makes no mention of Jovinian’s views regarding the integrity of Mary’s physical virginity during the process of giving birth. Kelly suggests that this might be because, unlike Ambrose, Jerome did not have a significant problem with Jovinian’s views. See Kelly, Jerome, 185-6.

(14) Against Jovinianus 1.5 is the main locus for Jovinian’s biblical arguments regarding marriage and celibacy.

(15) Jovinian, quoted in Jerome, Against Jovinianus 1.5, in St. Jerome: Letters and Select Works, 349. For analysis of Jovinian’s accusation that his opponents were exhibiting the Manichean heresy, see Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy, 130-170.

(16) Ibid, 1.41, 379. Jerome does not indicate what secular evidence Jovinian brought forth.

(17) Jerome, Against Jovinian, 2.1, 387. Jerome’s original wording is almost certainly an accurate record of Jovinian’s words. David Hunter argues that Jerome either did not understand Jovinian’s point about baptism, or by altering the wording he allowed himself to take on an issue he could easily refute, even if it was not exactly what Jovinian was teaching. See Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity, 36. Jerome’s paraphrase of “overthrown” surely indicates an unwillingness to deal with the essential issues raised by Jovinian in this proposition.

(18) Hunter, idem, 36-37.

(19) Jovinian, quoted in Jerome, Against Jovinianus, 2.5, in St. Jerome: Letters and Select Works, 392.

(20) Jovinian, quoted in Jerome, Against Jovinianus, 2.18, in St. Jerome: Letters and Select Works, 402.

(21) At the beginning of Against Jovinian, Jerome assessed his adversary’s style of rhetoric in an effort to discredit the quality of his work. Jerome was unimpressed with the rhetorical quality of the work, but by navigating what he viewed to be the confusing rhetoric, he concluded that “[Jovinian’s] object in proclaiming the excellence of marriage was only to disparage virginity;” Jerome, Against Jovinianus, 1.3, in St. Jerome: Letters and Select Works, 347. This is, in fact, not at all the case. Jovinian’s object was to disparage the hierarchy of merit, not specifically virginity. Jerome either misunderstood or misrepresented Jovinian’s motivation, and thus misunderstood or misrepresented his central thesis.

(22) Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, ed. Hilton C. Oswald (St. Louis: Concordia, 1973), 28:3.

(23) Peter Brown, Body and Society, 55.

(24) Jerome, Against Jovinianus, 1.7, in St. Jerome: Letters and Select Works, 350.

(25) Ibid, 1.9, (NPNF 2.6, 352).

(26) Ibid, 1.14, (NPNF 2.6, 358).

(27) Ibid, 1.16, (NPNF 2.6, 359-360).

(28) Ibid, 1.16, (NPNF 2.6, 360).

(29) Ibid, 1.24, (NPNF 2.6, 364).

(30) Ibid, 1.22, (NPNF 2.6, 363).

(31) Peter Brown, Body and Society, 377.

(32) On Pammachius’ relationship with Jerome, see David Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy, 24-26.

(33) Jerome’s cover letter to Pammachius is “Letter 49.” The actual defense, also addressed to Pammachius, is “Letter 48.”

(34)For a discussion of Ambrosiaster’s differences with Jerome, see Brown, Body and Society, 377-378; also Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy, 159-170.

(35) David G. Hunter, “Introduction,” in Marriage and Virginity, The Works of Saint Augustine for the 21st Century, 19.

(36) Ibid, 15.

(37) Augustine, The Excellence of Marriage, 1.1, 2.2, 16.18.

(38) See Augustine’s summary of the three goods of marriage in The Excellence of Marriage, 24.32.

(39) Augustine, The Excellence of Marriage, 24.32, in Marriage and Virginity, 57.

(40) Ibid, 8.8, 39.

(41) For more on Augustine’s influence on medieval the- ology, see Jaroslav Pelikan, The Growth of Medieval Theology (600-1300), 9-17.

(42) Philip Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian, 2nd edition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 99.

(43) Martin Luther, “The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows,” in The Christian and Society, Luther’s Works (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 44:305- 306; quoted in David G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity, 6-7. Luther in fact published his own exposition of 1 Corinthians 7 in which he frequently interacted with Jerome’s interpretation of the passage; Martin Luther, “Commentary on 1 Corinthians 7,” trans. by Edward Sittler, in Luther’s Works, Vol. 28, ed. Hilton C. Oswald (St. Louis: Concordia, 1973).

(44) David G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity, 6.

(45) Melanchton, “De ecclesia et de auctoritate verbi dei: De Hieronymo, in Charles Leander Hill, Melanchton: Selected Writings (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1962), 161; quoted in David G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity, 7.

(46) John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians, trans. by John Pringle (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009), 20:222.

(47) nThe Council of Trent, Session XXIV, “Canons on the Sacrament of Matrimony,” in The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, trans. by H. J. Schroeder (Rockford, IL: Tan, 1978), 181.

(48) Martin Luther, “The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows,” in The Christian and Society, Luther’s Works, vol. 44, 305-306; quoted in David G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity, 6-7.

About the Author: C. Michael Wren, Jr., (Ph.D., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is senior pastor of New Life Baptist Church in Greencastle, Indiana. He has taught church history at the North Georgia campus of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and Christian studies at Truett-McConnell College. He is the author of articles in the field of church history for Tennessee Baptist History as well as a chapter in Trained in the Fear of God (edited by Randy Stinson and Timothy Paul Jones). Michael lives in Greencastle with his wife, Angela, and his children, William and Anna. He enjoys hiking, drinking Coca-Cola, and watching University of Georgia athletics.

[Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in The Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry 3.1 (2012).  Click here for a PDF copy of this article.]

After taking the straws to the microscope’s stage, she snips off the ends. Slowly, slowly she pushes a plunger through the straw. One by one the embryos move into the Petri dish that contains the proper media for safe thawing and expansion. The tiny persons, having been suspended in cryogenic limbo for months—even years—swell with the ingress of fluid. Two, six, at times as many as one hundred cells. Breathtaking.

The embryologist moves the embryos from one solution to the next, bringing them back to normal fluid balance. The healthy ones become apparent quickly. Others remain unchanged, crystallized, having failed to survive the freeze-thaw process. She hears only the hum of the heating equipment, recognizing the tragic death of a fellow human being.

For the surviving embryos, appointments have already been made. Background checks completed. Donating and adoptive parents paired. Medical checks completed for the adoptive mother. Hormonal preparation has been completed for the transfer on this special day.

The fertility specialist rechecks the identification and status of embryos before a final consultation with the recipient mom. He explains the current status of the embryos and obtains proper consent. The operating room is prepared.

The specialist examines the recipient mom to determine the precise location for placing the embryos. Having completed this, he uses instruments and ultrasound to pass the special catheter through the window to the adjoining lab.

The embryologist, standing on the other side of the window, moves the embryos to the final solution, draws them up into the transfer catheter, and passes it back to the fertility specialist. Using ultrasound guidance, he transfers the embryos to the proper location.

Once finished, he withdraws the catheter, and passes it back to be reexamined. Finally, the embryologist checks to ensure that the embryos have made the move from tube to uterus.

From this moment each embryo must accomplish what God designed the embryo to do—to implant by finding a suitable site in the uterine wall and growing into it. The hormonal environment has been optimized, but the miracle remains in the hands of God.

What has just occurred with this transfer of a once- frozen embryo? Is this a tissue transplant or an adop- tion? Can a microscopic person truly be adopted?

Rapid advances in assisted reproductive technologies have resulted in an unanticipated theological and ethical dilemma. From the first successful IVF-ET procedure in 1978 until now, the efficiency and availability of such high-tech procedures has resulted in an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 cyropreserved (frozen) embryos. Cryopreserved embryos, though containing a mere few cells are clearly living beings—as evidenced by their further development and delivery of numerous viable offspring to date.

What options are available for these tiny human beings?

• Designation for research or experimentation? This results in the death of the embryo.
• Supposed “compassionate transfer” wherein frozen embryos are returned to the womb at a time when implantation is virtually impossible? This too results in the death of the embryo.
• Terminal thaw, allowing the frozen embryos to return gradually to room temperature in the Petri dish? Again, the result is the death of the embryo.
• Long-term or permanent cryopreservation? A paralysis of indecision for parents.
• Donation and adoption by screened parents willing to accept transfer of the embryos with the goal of development and delivery into a family? This option alone provides these tiny children with a life, a home, and a family.

I am convinced by the theological and biological evidence that a new human life and person begins when the chromosomes of the sperm align with the chromo- somes of the egg, and activate—a process called syngamy. Thus, the one-celled embryo, the zygote, is indeed and in truth a person.

The principle of the sanctity of human life declares that each and every human being is of inestimable value by “being” not by “doing” or achieving certain maturation levels. Every human being is a person, worthy of honor and respect and an eternally significant part of God’s plan to glorify Himself through creation, whether that life exists for one day or exceeds one hundred earthly years.

If one sees procreation as a gift from God for his ultimate glory, the value of the preimplantation embryo is seen as immeasurable. Each cryopreserved embryo represents a tiny human, made in the image of God, worthy of dignity, respect and protection. Once one ascribes full human personhood to the embryo, even in its cryopreserved state, such options as destruction, terminal thaw, and experimentation become an affront to human life because they constitute the willful death of a fellow human being.

If we look at the embryos themselves, the solution becomes clearer. Suppose that it were possible to retrieve viable embryos from the fallopian tubes in an ectopic—or tubal—pregnancy, a medical emergency in which the mother’s life is at risk and the embryo could be frozen until the mother heals, such that transfer could take place then. Most would applaud such a solution to a situation that at present always ends an embryo’s death. A human life, having innate value, has been rescued.

Such is the opportunity with the existing population of frozen embryos. While I have serious reservations about freezing human embryos in the first place, these embryos already exist. Christian ethicists and theologians must remain consistent in their view of the sanctity of human life. Embryos, having endured frozen limbo for years, even decades, have no voice and no chance if we fail to speak on their behalf.

Watching that morning as the embryologist removed each embryo-containing straw from liquid nitrogen and observing those that survived the thaw was a profoundly moving experience. So few of these tiny children get the chance to develop and grow. Some couples with biological children are open to embryo adoption. Others with untreatable fertility issues who want to have children are likewise open to this process.

Each represents sacrificial love “for the least of these.” The broader pro-life community must prayerfully consider that beyond opposing abortion, beyond opposing embryonic stem cell research, beyond speaking on behalf of pre-born babies, and beyond raising awareness for national and international adoption, we must add one more group to those deserving our advocacy. We must include the adoption, the survival, of our tiny frozen neighbors, to the very last straw.

About the Author: William R. Cutrer (M.D., University of Kentucky) serves as C. Edwin Gheens Professor of Christian Ministry and as the Director of the Gheens Center for Family Ministry at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. After a successful medical career, he served as a senior pastor in Mesquite, Texas. He has been a guest lecturer at numerous colleges, churches, and other institutions. Dr. Cutrer is the author or co-author of several publications, including Sexual Intimacy in Marriage, and his most recent release The Church Leader’s Handbook: A Guide to Counseling Families and Individuals in Crisis.

[Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in The Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry 3.1 (2012).  Click here for a PDF copy of this article.]

We discovered that the very earliest “school” for worship is in the home—when we help a baby be quiet for just a moment while we ask God’s blessing on our meal; when a toddler is sitting still to listen to a Bible story book; when a child is learning to pay attention to God’s Word and to pray during family devotional times.

At church, even while our children were still nursery-aged, I began to help them take steps toward eventual regular attendance in Sunday morning worship service. I used other gatherings as a training ground—baptisms, choir concerts, missionary videos or other special events that would grab the attention of a three-year-old. I’d “promote” these to the child as something exciting and grown-up. The occasional special attendance gradually developed into regular evening attendance, while at the same time we were beginning to attempt Sunday mornings more and more regularly.

I’ve chosen not to use the church’s child care as an escape route when the service becomes long or the child gets restless. I don’t want to communicate that you go to a service as long as it seems interesting, and then you can go play. And I wanted to avoid a pattern that might reinforce the idea that all of the service is good, up until the preaching of God’s Word—then you can leave.

Of course, there are times when a child gets restless or noisy, despite a parent’s best efforts. I pray for the understanding of the people around me, and try to deal with the problem unobtrusively. But if the child won’t be quiet or still, I take him or her out—for the sake of quick discipline and for the sake of the other worshipers. Then I have to decide whether we’ll slip back into service or stay in the area reserved for parents with young children. It depends on how responsive the child seems and whether there’s an appropriate moment in the flow of the service. If we stay in the “family area” outside the sanctuary, I help my child sit quietly as if we were still in the sanctuary.

By the time they are four years old, our children assume that they’ll be at all the regular weekly services with us.

Your anticipation and conversation before and after service and during the week will be important in helping your child learn to love worship and to behave well in service.

Help your children become acquainted with your pastor. Let them shake hands with him at the door and be greeted by him. Talk about who the worship leaders are; call them by name. Suggest that your child’s Sunday School teacher invite the pastor to spend a few minutes with the children if your church’s Sunday morning schedule allows for that.

If you know what the Scripture passage will be for the coming Sunday, read it together several times during the week. A little one’s face really lights up when he hears familiar words from the pulpit.

Talk about what is “special” this week: a trumpet solo, a friend singing, a missionary speaker from a country you have been praying for.

Sometimes you can take the regular elements of the service and make them part of the anticipation. “We’ve been reading about Joseph. What do you think the pastor will say about him?” “What might the choir be singing this morning?” “Maybe we can sit next to our handicapped friend and help him with his hymnbook so he can worship better too.”

There are two additional and important pre-service preparations for us: a pen and notepad for “Sunday notes” and a trip to the rest room (leaving the service is highly discouraged).

First, I let a child who wants a worship folder have one—it helps a child feel like a participant in the service. And quietly, before service begins, I may point to the different parts of the service listed in the folder.

During service, we all sit or stand along with rest of the congregation. I share my Bible or hymnal or worship folder with my little one, because use of these is an important part of the service.

The beginning of the sermon is the signal for “notetaking” to begin. (I want a child’s activities to be related to the service. So we don’t bring library books to read. I do let a very young child look at pictures in his Bible, if he can do it quietly.) Notetaking doesn’t mean just scribbling, but “taking notes” on a special pad used just for service.

“Taking notes” grows up as the child does. At first he draws pictures of what he hears in the sermon. Indi- vidual words or names trigger individual pictures. You might pick out a word that will be used frequently in the sermon; have the child listen carefully and make a check mark in his “notes” each time he hears the word.

Later he may want to copy letters or words from the Scripture passage for the morning. When spelling comes easier, he will write words and then phrases he hears in the sermon. Before you might expect it, he will probably be outlining the sermon and noting whole concepts.

My training for worship has three main goals:

1. That children learn early and as well as they can to worship God heartily.

2. That parents be able to worship.

3. That families cause no distraction to the people around them.

So there are certain expectations that I teach the young ones and expect of the older ones:

1. Sit or stand or close eyes when the service calls for it.

2. Sit up straight and still—not lounging or fidg- eting or crawling around, but respectful toward God and the worshipers around you.

3. Keep bulletin papers and Bible and hymnal pages as quiet as possible. 4. Stay awake. Taking notes helps. (I did allow the smallest ones to sleep, but they usually didn’t need to!)

5. Look toward the worship leaders in the front. No people-gazing or clock-watching.

6. If you can read fast enough, sing along with the printed words. At least keep your eyes on the words and try to think them. If you can’t read yet, listen very hard.

For my part, I try to create an environment in our pew that makes worship easier. In past years, I would sit between whichever two were having the most trouble with each other that day. We choose seats where we can see the front better (while seated, not kneeling on the pew; kneeling leads to squirming and blocks the view of others).

Each child has a Bible, offering money and worship folder at hand, so he doesn’t have to scramble and dig during the worship time. During the prelude, if I notice in the bulletin something unusual for which we need to be prepared (a responsive reading or congregational prayers, for example), I quietly point it out to a child who is old enough to participate.

When the service has ended, my first words are praise to the child who has behaved well. In addition to the praise, I might also mention one or two things that we both hope will be better next time. But what if there has been disregard of our established expectations and little attempt to behave? The first thing that happens following the service is a silent and immediate trip to the most private place we can find. Then the deserved words are spoken and consequences administered or promised.

On the rare occasions when my pastor-husband could sit with the rest of us, the youngest one climbed right into his lap—and is more attentive and still than usual. What a wonderful thing for a young mind to closely associate the closeness and warmth of a parent’s lap with special God-times.

A child gets almost the same feeling from being next to his parent or from an arm around the shoulder or an affectionate hand on the knee.

The setting of the tight family circle focusing toward God will be a nonverbal picture growing richer and richer in the child’s mind and heart as he matures in appreciation for his family and in awe at the greatness of God.

About the Author:  Noël Piper travels for missions and speaking as often and as far as possible and she is steadily involved with ministries and activities of Joni and Friends, both locally and internationally. She has been married to John Piper since 1968. They have four sons and a daughter, four daughters- in-law, and an increasing number of grandchildren. Their children grew up in Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, where John has been a pastor since 1980.

[Editor's Note: Reprinted from DesiringGod.org. Used by permission.  This article also appeared in The Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry 3.1 (2012).  You can access a PDF copy of this article here.]

It is a truly exciting thing to be involved in your child’s spiritual journey. The fact that you are reading this is proof that you are genuinely invested in your child’s spiritual future. Ensuring your child is well cared for in terms of physical and emotional provision is certainly important. However, the greatest contribution you can make to your child’s well being is instilling a fervent love for Jesus Christ. But how does this happen? What steps must a parent take in order to lead their child to Christ? How can you ensure that what happens at church is a supplement and not a replacement for spiritual guidance at home?

Deuteronomy 6:4-12 provides an excellent framework to answer these questions. It commands parents to nurture their children spiritually during all parts of the day: at home, during travel time, when waking up and when going to sleep. These are all excellent times to share the Word of the Lord with your children and take intentional measures to grow them in Christ. As you read further, you will be encouraged in your attempts to spiritually impact your child. You will get some helpful hints in communicating the gospel to your child and learn about several means by which you can measure your child’s spiritual health. May the Lord bless you as you take bold and loving steps to lead your child to Christ.

The X-Factor—YOU

Paul praises Timothy’s grandmother, Lois, and mother, Eunice, for imparting the gospel into young Timothy’s life. The primary way to lead your child to Christ is through the faithful testimony of your own life. Paul, in I Timothy 1:5 calls this a “sincere faith.” Your child has watchful eyes and will attentively notice your spiritual ups and downs. He will easily discern if Jesus is the love of your life and learn from you what makes up a Christ follower. He will observe how you go about growing in Christ and how you show your love for Christ to the rest of the world.

You are the X-Factor. Being an X-Factor means that you are a special piece of your child’s spiritual puzzle. You hold an almost irresistible influence over how your children will develop spiritually. Here are a few self-examination questions for you:

• How have you exhibited great faith in God to your child?
• Have you been transparent with your children about your imperfections and need for forgiveness?
• Do you openly talk about Jesus and how He is impacting your life with your children?
• Do your children see in you a general desire to please the Lord?
• Do your children witness you reading God’s Word on a regular basis?
• Do you pray often and lead your children in times of prayer outside of bedtime and meal time?

Communicating the Gospel

Kids (and all people for that matter) need to be certain of the facts of salvation before they can respond appropriately. When teaching your children the gospel message be sure they recognize the basic premise that they are sinners and that because of God’s great love for them, He allowed His son Jesus to be crucified, buried and resurrected for their sin. Here are some Scriptures you can utilize to help convey these truths:

• We are sinners—Genesis 3:1-24, Judges 17:6, Psalm 51:3-5, Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23
• God loves us greatly—Psalm 117:2, John 3:16, John 15:9, Romans 5:8,Romans 8:38-39, I John 3:16
• Jesus died for ours sin—Mark 8:31, Luke 24:45-47, I Corinthians 15:3-4,Philippians 2:8-10, Hebrews 9:14
• The proper response is Repentance and Faith—Mark 1:15, John 3:36, Acts 2:38; Ephesians 2:8-9, Hebrews 6:1

Repentance and faith are the internal responses that God desires to work in us in order to save us from our sin. It is good to raise a child up to know the Scriptures and to talk of the things of the Lord. However, a child is not “born” a Christian. He, as anyone else, must be born again (John 3:5, I Peter 1:23) by a work of God in his heart. As a parent, you must be able to see some sort of change in his life as a result of his repentance and faith. Repentance is a literal changing of mind and heart. It is a recognition that sin is destructive to one’s relationship with God and a turning toward God recognizing that one needs Him. Faith is a reliance on the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus to wipe away one’s sin. It is a personal trust and approval in the person and work of Jesus.

When talking about the gospel with your child, you will want to be sure to use clear terminology. Until about the age of ten or eleven, children tend to think very concretely. They may not understand the metaphors we use to communicate the gospel. Here are a few confusing phrases that can muddy the waters for your child and tend to detract from the basic response of repentance and faith:

• Ask Jesus into your heart
• Give your life to the Lord
• Make a decision for Christ
• Come to Christ
• Get saved

If you steer away from these phrases and stick to clear and biblical terminology, children will be better able to understand the gospel message and properly respond to it. Below are a few analogies which may help you communicate the gospel message more clearly:

• Sin: Tell the child you are cracking eggs and putting them in a bowl to scramble. Sounds delicious, huh? Tell him you cracked one bad, spoiled egg and it all goes into the bowl to be mixed around. Ask him if he would still like to eat the other eggs. He probably will not. This is like our sin. Just one sin is offensive to God and messes up our entire relationship with the Father.

• Sin: Ask the child what happens when fruit punch is spilled on a white t-shirt in a store? It stains. The shirt cannot be sold now. Our sin stains us and keeps us from Heaven because nothing impure or unclean can enter into Heaven.

• God’s love: Ask him how he would feel if his brother/sister/cousin took the punishment for something bad that he did. Tell him that if his relative took the punishment because they wanted to suffer in his place, he would know that the relative really loved him. God has such a great love that He is willing to sacrifice for the ones he loves through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.

• Jesus: Ask him what someone does in a basketball game when he is too tired to play. He has a substitute come in and play for him. He gets someone to go in and do what he could not do. That is what Jesus did on the cross. He died to take the punishment we deserve and he was raised again to give us the eternal life we don’t deserve. If we had to suffer the punishment for our sin, we would be dead forever. We need a substitute to take our place so that we can have forgiveness.

Tips and Pointers

• Be sure to pray for and with your child. Ask for the Holy Spirit to work in his heart and to give you wisdom of speech.
• Remember that simply knowing all the right answers does not mean he is born again, you need to discern the work of the Holy Spirit in the process.
• Do not push or set a goal for your child to be saved.
• Keep a journal of your child’s questions or conversations to see how the Lord is working over time.
• Do not coerce your child to a decision or put words in his mouth. Let your conversations be conversational, not lectures.
• Let him pray his own prayer of response rather than repeating after you. This helps you to grasp his understanding of repentance and faith.
• Baptism, jealousy, recognition or peer pressure could be the source of his questions rather than a sorrow for sin and desire for forgiveness. Try to discern the spirit of his questions and comments.
• Steer away from yes or no questions when talking with him. Seek to get him to provide longer answers.
• Have him tell you about the plan of salvation and respond like you were a friend who did not know. Kids enjoy role playing.

Questions to Consider

1. What has been the extent of spiritual conversations with your child?
2. Try to imagine how your child might answer the following questions based on your previous conversations.
   • Who is God?
   • Who is Jesus?
   • What is sin?
   • How does God feel about sin?
   • How did God make the way to forgive us of our sin?
3. Based on your answers to the previous question, how would you rate the child’s readiness to repent and believe?
   • My child does not seem quite capable of understanding those concepts yet.
   • There is some understanding, but they need more information or is not quite mature enough.
   • My child knows the basics, but has not yet expressed repentance and faith.
   • My child knows the basics, but is resistant to becoming a Christian at this point.
   • My child has had a defining moment of repentance and faith.
4. If your child has expressed genuine repentance and faith, can you pinpoint several areas of fruit in his or her life since that moment?
5. After working through the above questions, you should be able to accurately discern what next steps your child needs to take. Is it:

• More time
• More information and conversation
• Prayer that God will communicate in ways you have not been able to in order to bring better understanding
• Gentle encouragement to repent and believe
• Move forward with believers baptism

[Editor's Note: This article originally appeared here at Dr. Andy Johnson's personal website, BecomingSaturated.com  Used by Permission.]

Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids. By Kara E. Powell and Chap Clark. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011, 224 pp. $14.99. Paperback.

Why are college students so prone to walking away from, or completely rejecting, the Christian faith? How can a teenager who was actively involved in youth group and ministry simply “shelve” the Christian faith for a time? Who is to blame for the pervasiveness of young people leaving the church? How can we instill within our children a lasting faith that perseveres against the tides of secularism, doubt, and fleeting temptations? These questions and more are what Kara Powell and Chap Clark seek to answer in their excellent work, Sticky Faith. Powell currently serves as the executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute (FYI) and a faculty member of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, and Clark is an associate provost at Fuller in addition to teaching courses in the area of youth, family, and culture. Together, they have written a work that will be of immense help to pastors and parents in the task of instilling Sticky Faith in their children.

What exactly is Sticky Faith, according to Powell and Clark? Sticky Faith is the type of faith that is internal and external, personal and communal, and mature and maturing (22-23). According to the authors, the heart of Sticky Faith is “developing a clear and honest understanding of both the gospel and biblical faith. As our kids are led into an awareness of their significant role in the kingdom of God demonstrated throughout Scripture, they will have the best chance of discovering a faith that is compelling and life-giving” (32).

Powell and Clark reveal several statistics from their research that indicate how desperate the need truly is for parents and church leaders to take a more serious approach to nurturing lifelong faith in their children. Only about 40 to 50 percent of church youth group graduates continue with their faith into their college years (15). Only 20 percent of college students planned to abandon the faith in high school, while 80 percent intended to stick with their faith and later abandoned it (16). About 40% of new college students feel unpre- pared in finding a new church (152). The authors note that when asked about what it means to be a Christian, an unimpressive 35 percent of college juniors (who were youth group graduates) failed to mention anything about God or Jesus. Moreover, only 12 percent of the 11,000 teenagers surveyed spoke regularly with their mom about matters of faith, while only 5 percent spoke with their dads about such topics (71). There are several more alarming statistics described in this work, but the point is that parents and ministry leaders must discover new ways to help children and youth obtain a Sticky Faith.

Powell and Clark devote much of their text to suggesting practical tips for practitioners and anecdotes that prove their success. I found these practical suggestions to be useful and insightful, as they are grounded in both theory and real-world practice. The authors certainly have a grasp on how children learn, think, and grow, which aids in their ability to generate such keen ideas. For example, in helping children form their identities as Christians, the authors suggest teaching children of their inherent value to God, treating each child as an individual, using community relationships to develop personal identity, practicing rituals that reinforce identity (e.g., debriefing in the car after school, celebrating numerous occasions in lavish manner, and others), affirming character growth more than academic achievement, and modeling a right relationship with God (Chapter 3). An incredibly insightful chapter focusing on having spiritual conversations with children encourages parents to listen and ask questions of their children, tackle touchy subjects like sex, be transparent regarding spiritual doubt, and develop conversation rituals (Chapter 4). Perhaps the most difficult chapter to execute well deals with preparing teenagers to go off to college; the authors not only describe the realities of sending kids to college but also provide guidelines for preparing teenagers to make the spiritual, emotional, and relational step into college life. Parents with high school juniors and seniors will find this chapter especially helpful, as it provides a wealth of invaluable practices to make this transition to college easier on both students and parents.

Sticky Faith does not try to build a robust theology of spiritual parenting or critique modern styles of parenting, but these are not the intentions of the book. The book is meant to be practical and provide “everyday ideas to build lasting faith” in children, as its subtitle suggests. Though anyone can appreciate the insights of Powell and Clark, I am concerned that they generally (though not always) neglect to describe what Scripture and theology say about these “sticky findings.” They generally go from identifying the problem straight to suggesting what needs to be done. Instead, I would have liked the authors to understand these findings from a Scriptural perspective, and admonish both parents and children using Scripture as a guide. The book is meant to be practical and user-friendly, but the insight of Scripture cannot be neglected when dealing with a topic as serious as raising children in the faith.

Parents and ministry leaders looking for a theological foundation for raising children spiritually should look elsewhere. Those who crave practical advice about how best to raise children with a Sticky Faith might do well to read this book. At times, the authors’ suggestions seem to be commonsense, but their advice may provide a fresh reminder for parents. Children’s ministry leaders will find this work to be a resource for building onto already-successful ministry endeavors, or even starting from scratch.

[Editor's Note: This review originally appeared in The Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry 3.1 (2012).]

Not all services are this way. Sunday morning is the Mount of Transfiguration—the awesome place of glory and speechlessness. Sunday or Wednesday evening is the Mount of Olives—the familiar spot for conversation with the Lord and each other.

In this article, we hope to do two things: (1) demonstrate that parents (or some responsible adult) should bring little children to the Sunday morning worship service rather than send them to a “children’s church,” and (2) give some practical advice about how to do it.

We don’t claim that our way of worshiping is the only valid way. Not all our ideas may fit with the way another church does it.

For example, we don’t have a children’s sermon as part of our Sunday morning service. It would be fun for the children, but in the long run would weaken the spiritual intensity of our worship. To everything there is a season. And we believe that, for at least one hour a week, we should sustain a maximum intensity of moving reverence.

There are several reasons why we urge parents to bring their children to worship. But these arguments will not carry much weight with parents who do not love to worship God.

The greatest stumbling block for children in worship is that their parents do not cherish the hour. Children can feel the difference between duty and delight. Therefore, the first and most important job of a parent is to fall in love with the worship of God. You can’t impart what you don’t possess.

Worshiping together counters the contemporary fragmentation of families. Hectic American life leaves little time for significant togetherness. It is hard to overestimate the good influence of families doing valuable things together week in and week out, year in and year out.

Worship is the most valuable thing a human can do. The cumulative effect of 650 worship services spent with Mom and Dad between the ages of four and seventeen is incalculable.

Parents have the responsibility to teach their children by their own example the meaning and value of worship. Therefore, parents should want their children with them in worship so the children can catch the spirit and form of their parents’ worship.

Children should see how Mom and Dad bow their heads in earnest prayer during the prelude and other non-directed times. They should see how Mom and Dad sing praise to God with joy in their faces, and how they listen hungrily to His Word. They should catch the spirit of their parents meeting the living God.

Something seems wrong when parents want to take their children in the formative years and put them with other children and other adults to form their attitude and behavior in worship. Parents should be jealous to model for their children the tremendous value they put on reverence in the presence of Almighty God.

To sit still and be quiet for an hour or two on Sunday is not an excessive expectation for a healthy six-year-old who has been taught to obey his parents. It requires a measure of discipline, but that is precisely what we want to encourage parents to impart to their children in the first five years.

Thus the desire to have children in the worship service is part of a broader concern that children be reared so that they are “submissive and respectful in every way” (1 Timothy 3:4).

Children can be taught in the first five years of life to obey their father and mother when they say, “Sit still and be quiet.” Parents’ helplessness to control their children should not be solved by alternative services but by a renewal of discipline in the home.

Children absorb a tremendous amount that is of value. And this is true even if they say they are bored.

Music and words become familiar. The message of the music starts to sink in. The form of the service comes to feel natural. The choir makes a special impression with a kind of music the children may hear at no other time. Even if most of the sermon goes over their heads, experience shows that children hear and remember remarkable things.

The content of the prayers and songs and sermon gives parents unparalleled opportunities to teach their children the great truths of our faith. If parents would only learn to query their children after the service and then explain things, the children’s capacity to participate would soar.

Not everything children experience has to be put on their level in order to do them good. Some things must be. But not everything.

For example, to learn a new language you can go step by step from alphabet to vocabulary to grammar to syntax. Or you can take a course where you dive in over your head, and all you hear is the language you don’t know. Most language teachers would agree that the latter is by far the most effective.

Sunday worship service is not useless to children just because much of it goes over their heads. They can and will grow into this new language faster than we think—if positive and happy attitudes are fostered by the parents.

There is a sense of solemnity and awe which children should experience in the presence of God. This is not likely to happen in children’s church. Is there such a thing as chil- dren’s thunder or children’s lightning or the crashing of the sea “for children”?

A deep sense of the unknown and the mysterious can rise in the soul of a sensitive child in solemn worship—if his parents are going hard after God themselves. A deep moving of the magnificence of God can come to the young, tender heart through certain moments of great hymns or “loud silence” or authoritative preaching. These are of immeasurable value in the cultivation of a heart that fears and loves God.

We do not believe that children who have been in children’s church for several years between the ages of six and twelve will be more inclined or better trained to enjoy worship than if they had spent those years at the side of their parents. In fact, the opposite is probably the case.

It will probably be harder to acclimate a ten–or twelve-year-old to a new worship service than a five–or six-year-old. The cement is much less wet, and vast possibilities of shaping the impulses of the heart are gone.

[Editor's Note: This article was reprinted from DesiringGod.org and  is used here by permission.  This article also appeared in The Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry 3.1 (2012).]

As all societies, civil and religious, originate from families; so families derive from that first and most important of all social connections, the conjugal relation.— Samuel Stennett (1)

Baptist memory of the Reformation is somewhat myopic, being usually restricted to the Protestant rediscovery of the way of salvation— by Christ alone, through faith alone— and renewed access to the Scriptures for the man and woman in the pew. However, one of the most important gifts of the Reformation to the various traditions that stem from that era was the concept of Christian marriage as a vocation and the fact that there is no intrinsic value in a celibate life (2) This is patent from a close reading of extant seventeenth-and eighteenth-century English Baptist literature, for instance, which reveals a community that had reflected deeply upon what the Scriptures had to say about the nature of marriage and its purpose.

This subject really needs a monograph to do it justice; but, for now, an article will have to suffice (3). In what follows three texts/sets of texts are discussed: first, a key confessional statement on marriage, that of the Second London Confession, which helped define the boundaries for many Baptists with regard to marriage in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; second, the systematic theological reflection of two important Baptist theologians, Thomas Grantham and John Gill, on what constitutes a true marriage and why God has given marriage to humanity; and third, the correspondence of Samuel Pearce to his wife Sarah Hopkins Pearce in the final decade of the eighteenth century in which this couple modeled for those who knew them—and now for us—the beauty and glory of a Christian marriage.

Contrary to the received wisdom of some twentieth-century Baptist authors, the early Baptists were convinced that the Christian life should be robustly confessional. Various confessions of faith were thus drafted in the seventeenth century, of which the most influential has to have been The Second London Confession of Faith, published first in 1677 by a group of Calvinistic Baptist churches and then reprinted in 1688 as the doctrinal standard of this body of churches in England and Wales. It followed closely the wording and structure of the Presbyterian Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) and the Congregationalist Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order (1658). After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, there was a prolonged attempt by the state church to enforce reli- gious uniformity upon the English nation. In order to present a united front with their Reformed brethren in the Presbyterian and Congregationalist denominations over against this persecution and its violence against the conscience, the Calvinistic Baptists employed the afore- mentioned confession as a beginning point for their own doctrinal declaration (4).

There are four articles in the Second London Confession that deal specifically with marriage. It is noteworthy that none of these articles seek to define marriage either in terms of its covenantalism or its overtly typological relationship to Christ and His Church. This lacuna is typical of Reformed confessions. For instance, the Second Helvetic Confession (1566), which has one of the longer statements on marriage, chapter XXIX, fails to define it, as does the Westminster Confession, which lies at the base of the Baptist statement of faith.

The Baptist confession begins with the statement that marriage is “to be between one man and one woman” and that neither party may have more than one spouse at a given time, which especially guards against polygamy. This was of concern to these English Baptists as the charge that they were Anabaptists carried with it the implication that the English Baptists also practiced polygamy, as the Münster rebels had done under the leadership of John of Leiden (c.1509-1536). The Calvinistic Baptists were happy then to take the opening article against polygamy from the Westminster Confession, which helped to emphasize a further area of likeness with their fellow English Protestants and distance from the continental Anabaptist radicals. The proof texts for the opening article are Genesis 2:24 and Matthew 19:5. The former explains the original intent of marriage in creation—that of one man and one woman—while the latter is the Lord’s reaffirmation of the Genesis state- ment. It is worth observing, though the confession does not state this explicitly, that the Baptists are affirming the continuity between the sexual ethics of the Old Testament and those of Jesus.

The Second London Confession also cites in this regard Malachi 2:15. In its context, this verse from the final book of the English Old Testament concerns the way Israel had broken covenant with God through idolatry and God’s hatred for their divorces. God desires godly “offspring” from Israel, and thus commands them: “[L]et none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.” It is noteworthy that the mention of divorce in the Malachi text did not prompt those who drew up the Second London Confession to frame a paragraph on divorce and remarriage. Contemporary Baptist theologian Samuel Waldron, in his commentary on the Second London Confession, thus expresses some dissatisfaction with its failure to treat this subject (5). By contrast, the chapter on marriage in the Presbyterian Westminster Confession includes two additional articles on divorce (see 24.5–6), which emphasize that it is permissible only in the case of adultery or desertion. One explanation for the omission of these articles in the Baptist text is that its framers felt that the biblical proof text of Malachi 2:15 was sufficient to direct readers to Scripture’s teaching on divorce. However, in 1697 the London Baptist Benjamin Keach (1640–1704), the leading pastor in this community in the final quarter of the seventeenth century and a signatory of the Second London Confession, drafted a statement of faith for his church. It also omitted divorce in its article on marriage and did not even cite Malachi 2 as a proof text (6). Did the Baptist leaders disapprove of divorce in toto? Further research is needed on this subject.

The second article turns to the biblical purposes of marriage. First of all, it is for the “mutual help” of the husband and wife (7). This affirmation is drawn directly from Thomas Cranmer’s (1489–1556) marriage service in The Book of Common Prayer (1549), where, for the first time in Christian history a marriage liturgy claimed that among the purposes of matrimony was “the mutual society, help and comfort” of the spouses for one another (8). By affirming Cranmer’s insight, the confession seems to go beyond what is often stated in theological discussions of the purpose of marriage. In sections on the duties of husbands and wives by theologians of this period and following, the wife is typically called the “help-meet” with the stress laid on her helping role. While the proof-text cited by the confession is Genesis 2:18—it explains the role of the wife as helper— the confession applies it to both spouses. Additionally this second article cites Genesis 1:28, the so-called “dominion” or “cultural” mandate, where the role of both spouses is to subdue the earth, which gives clear support for the idea of “mutual help.”

The second purpose for marriage is procreation, “the increase of mankind” through legitimate children. This view of the purpose of marriage had been especially emphasized by the enormously influential patristic theologian Augustine (354–430). Commenting on Genesis 2, Augustine was convinced that Eve would have been no use to Adam if she had not been able to bear children (9). The combination of Augustine’s view of the married estate with the highlighting of the celibate monk in late antiquity as the pinnacle of spirituality led to the situation in the medieval church where the central purpose of marriage was simply procreation. The mutual help that spouses gave to one another was a distant second or even third reason for marriage (10). The appearance of companionship in first place in the Baptist confession is thus not fortuitous. By it, the Baptists are aligning themselves with the Reformation rediscovery of marriage as a blessed estate, though they are also quite prepared to admit that the having of children has biblical support as a reason for marriage.

Third, marriage is also to prevent sexual uncleanness. The Second London Confession cites 1 Corinthians 7:2, 9, where the apostle Paul says that husbands and wives should enjoy a sexual relationship to keep them from stumbling into the sin of lust. By extension, marriage provides sexual satisfaction for both spouses, because it is such satisfaction that helps to keep a spouse from straying. This was important for any tradition stemming from the Reformation, where a major critique of the Roman church had been that its clergy were celibate but not chaste (11).

In its third article of the marriage chapter the con- fession expresses a socially radical view of marriage by saying that it is lawful for “all sorts of people” to marry based upon mutual consent (12). As Waldron comments, the general rule of the confession is “liberty,” that is, all kinds of people may marry if they so choose; presumably from across all ethnicities, cultures, classes, or countries.

The only limit for Christians is that they must “marry in the Lord.” The confession defines this limitation: “[T] herefore such as profess the true religion, should not marry with infidels, or idolators; neither should such as are godly be unequally yoked, by marrying with such as are wicked, in their life, or maintain damnable heresy” (13). By implication, this definition sees as unbiblical such limits to marriage as race or class. For the Christian, the only limit is that a Christian may not marry a non- Christian. The language of “unequally yoked” comes from 2 Corinthians 6:14, though the Confession does not cite it. Instead it refers to 1 Corinthians 7:39 where Paul tells a widowed woman that she is free to marry, so long as it is “in the Lord.”

The fourth and final article on marriage states negatively that two persons of blood relation are not to marry: “Marriage ought not to be within the degrees of consan- guinity, or affinity forbidden in the word ” (15). It defines such a marriage as “incest” and says that it can never be made lawful by man or “consent of parties.” Anyone who cohabitates in such a relationship is not to be considered “as man and wife.” The confession cites the entirety of Leviticus 18 as a proof-text that says in v. 6: “None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness.” The phrase “uncover their nakedness” is a euphemism for having a sexual relationship. The chapter goes on to stipulate against this practice in detail, listing those who are considered “near of kin,” including a “father’s wife” (v. 8); “sister” (v. 9); grand-child (v. 11); aunt (vv. 12–13) and other blood relations. If a society were to legally allow for incest, it would still remain unlawful before God. The confession cites two biblical examples of a forbidden union: the Baptist’s criti- cism of Herod for having his brother’s wife (Mark 6:18) and Paul’s rebuke of the Corinthian church for allowing into their membership a man who was sleeping with his stepmother (1 Corinthians 5:1).

Among the earliest reflections on marriage by a Baptist theologian are two texts written by the General Baptist Thomas Grantham (1634–1692), a prolific author who wrote what can be described as the first systematic theological treatise by a Baptist, his classic Christianismus Primitivus: or The Ancient Christian Religion (1678). In the third book of this massive folio Grantham dealt with Christian ethics and touched on marriage in two places. There is also a postscript in his Truth and Peace; or, The Last and most Friendly Debate concerning Infant-Baptism, published in 1689 (16).

After stating that “marriage is a solemn and honourable ordinance of God,” which God instituted for “the modest and orderly propagation of mankind” (17), Grantham spent a considerable amount of space in Christianismus Primitivus detailing what entails a lawful marital union, much of going over similar ground as the Second London Confession (18). He then turned to what constitutes a biblical reason for divorce and observed that apart from “pollution of the marriage bed,” there are no legitimate grounds for divorce. He particularly pointed out that Christian men should not harden their hearts against their wives if the latter lose their beauty (19). In a second portion of Christianismus Primitivus, Grantham stressed that Christian husbands are to exercise their God-given authority as the heads of their households, and their wives are to be obedient to their husbands’ rule (20). The husband’s authority, however, brings with it “great duties; for the husband is to love, defend, and provide for his wife.” Thus, the “Christian man’s greatest care, should be to live with his wife, as a joint-heir of the grace of life, and therein to help her” (21). His care for his wife must be rooted in a deep affection for her. As Grantham wisely stated:

[I]t is an insupportable sorrow, when a woman hath forsaken all relations in the world to consort with her husband, and then finds not his heart with her; this is called “a treacherous dealing,” and reproved by the prophet Malachi 2.14, 15. …he that putteth his wife out of his affection, dealeth no better than he that divorceth her. This want of love between husband and wife, is a grievous iniquity, a treasonable impiety, hateful in the sight of God; and yet it is that which Satan pre- vails to ensnare men with, to the provoking of the majesty of heaven against them, to the evil example of their families, and to the perdition of their own souls. God will be avenged on this generation for this iniquity. Jer. 5.7, 8, 9. “How shall I pardon thee for this?—every one neigheth after his neighbour’s wife: Shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord? Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?”

Grantham’s comments here are to be read in light of the fact that England, along with other northern European nations, was dominated by the nuclear family model, a social reality that predated the Reformation at least by a hundred years or more. In such a familial context, if a husband spurned his wife, she did not have an extended household to which she could turn (22). Grantham also has in view the flagrant sexual immorality of Charles II (r.1660–1685), his court, and many of the leaders of England of that day.

The other text from Grantham comes in the course of his explaining why Baptists did not use rings in their marriage ceremonies or kneel at an altar as Anglicans did—traditional Puritan issues—Grantham points out that the Scriptures do not actually prescribe any particular form for the marriage ceremony: “ceremonies are not of the essence of marriage” (23). Even the presence of a minister is not required—“we can find no ground to believe that to celebrate marriage is a ministerial act ” (24). The essentials of marriage that Grantham derives from Genesis 2:23–24 and Malachi 2:14 are simply “a marriage-covenant between persons who may lawfully marry” and the presence of witnesses (25). To require anything more than these basics is going beyond what Scripture requires and to suppose that God “has made this ordinance for the good of mankind, and yet left it defective in the very essentials of it; and sure it would magnify man too much to suppose him capable to mend this ordinance” (26).  From this assertion it is clear that Grantham is convinced marriage is intended for the benefit of humanity. He can even call it an “ordinance,” a word usually used by seventeenth-century divines for a means of grace (27).

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣

The doyen of Baptist theologians in the eighteenth century was the autodidact and Particular Baptist pastor John Gill (1697–1771) (28). He was a voluminous author, and, in the words of his early biographer John Rippon, if Gill’s works were all put into one series of volumes, they would add up to over “ten thousand folio pages of divinity” (29). Not surprisingly, Rippon noted that Gill “considered not any subject superficially, or by halves. As deeply as human sagacity, enlightened by grace, could penetrate, he went to the bottom of everything he engaged in” (30). Compared to other parts of Body of Divinity Gill’s discussion of marriage is relatively short, but this does not mean that it is treated lightly. The following section of this article obviously cannot do justice to the entire range of Gill’s reflections on marriage. What it seeks to do is to elucidate the major points of his teaching, following the structure of his Body of Divinity, comparing it with relevant selections from his commentaries, and an example or two from his own married life (31).

He began by pointing out that the respective duties of husbands and wives to one another are “summed up in these two general comprehensive ones: love on the one part, and reverence on the other, Eph. v. 33.”32 This is based on the “conjugal union” and “marriage relation” between the husband and wife. This union is between “male and female,” “one man” and “one woman,” based on the original creation of Genesis 1:27. The conjugal union makes the husband and wife “one flesh,” according to Genesis 2:24 and Matthew 19:6. Of the latter biblical text, Gill observed: “They were two before marriage, but now no more so” (33). The union is “indissoluble” except by death or by infidelity on the part of either party, whether by adultery or fornication (Rom 7:2; Matt 5:32). In his comment on Romans 7:2 he included desertion, based on 1 Corinthians 7:15, in what is permissible for divorce. Both adultery and desertion are “equal to death” (34). Commenting on the exception clause in Matthew, Gill argued that “fornication” includes adultery, incest, or “any unlawful copulation.” He also pointed out that Jesus’ permissibility clause for divorce is directly contrary to the Pharisaic understanding, based on Rabbi Hillel’s teaching, that “admitted of divorce, upon the most foolish and frivolous pretenses whatever” (35).

Marriage is to be entered into, not by compulsion, but “mutual consent” and with the consent of the parents or guardians of the couple: “[N]one are to be forced into it against their wills; no, not by their superiors; it must be their own voluntary act and deed” (36). Citing Hebrews 13:4, Gills emphasized that marriage is an honorable state, and is so because God instituted it at creation. The marriage between Adam and Eve was constructed by God who “made the woman for a help-meet, and brought her to the man, proposed her to him…and she became his wife…it was the Lord’s act and deed” (37). Likewise, in his comment on Genesis 1:28 he insisted that marriage is an ordinance instituted in paradise, and as such is honorable (38). It is also honorable because “Christ honored it by his presence, and at such a solemnity wrought his first miracle, and manifested forth the glory of his Deity” at the wedding feast of Cana recorded in John 2.

Gill further discussed the relationship between marriage and Christ by arguing that the marriage in Eden typifies “the conjugal union of Christ and the church, Eph. v. 32” (39). Adam is a type of Christ while Eve is a type of the church: “Adam was first formed, and then Eve; Christ was before the church and, indeed before all things; Eve was formed from Adam…the church has her original from Christ, and her subsistence by him.” As the Lord brought Eve to Adam (40), so the Church is brought to Christ “and given to him by his Father, to be his spouse and bride, who he liked, accepted of, and betrothed to himself; and her consent is obtained by the drawings and influences of his Father’s grace” (41). This prelapsarian prefiguring of Christ’s relationship with the Church—argued in a fashion not surprising for Gill—is an illustration of “the supralapsarian scheme”: Christ had an interest in his Church before she fell in Adam (42). Gill admitted, however, that “this is no direct proof ” of supralapsarianism, but only served to illustrate it.

There is a problem, however, with Gill’s allegorical interpretation of Eve as a type of the Church. He cited Ephesians 5:32 as a proof-text, though Paul is not making a typological connection between Eve and the Church, but rather wives and the Church. Surprisingly, Gill did not refer to 1 Timothy 2:15. Neither did he make this connection in his commentary on this passage nor in that on Genesis 2:22–24. On the other hand, Gill’s interpretation of Eve as a type of the Church was common in church history. John Flood shows that it was held by patristic and medieval theologians like Tertullian, Augustine, Bonaventure, and Nicholas of Lyra. In Flood’s words, “it is the spirit of Tertullian, which, to one degree or another, presides over the history of subsequent Genesis exegesis” (43).

Gill was on surer ground when he rooted the original intent of marriage in creation. The command to “increase and multiply” remains in effect, but since the fall marriage also serves to protect against sexual sin: it is “to prevent incontinence, and to avoid fornication” (44). In his discussion of Eve’s creation from Adam’s side in Gen- esis 2:22 Gill linked the purpose of marriage to com- panionship and love—and also affirmed the ontological equality of man and woman:

It is commonly observed, and pertinently enough, that the woman was not made from the superior part of man, that she might not be thought to be above him, and have power over him; nor from any inferior part, as being below him, and to be trampled on by him; but out of his side, and from one of his ribs, that she might appear to be equal to him; and from a part near his heart, and under his arms, to show that she should be affectionately loved by him, and be always under his care and protection (45).

Continuing with Ephesians 5:23 in his Body of Divinity, Gill now explained the respective duties of husbands and wives. Paul first tells husbands that they are to love their wives. Gill divided husbandly love into three parts: the nature of love; the manner of loving; and the reasons for love. A husband’s love for his wife, first of all, must be superior to the love he has for “any other creature.” His love for her, therefore, must super- sede love for neighbor, parent, or child because “a man’s wife is himself, and loving her is loving himself, the other part of himself” (46). Elsewhere he says, “[T]hey are, as it were, glued together, and make but one” (47).  A husband’s love should be rooted in delight; he should take pleasure in his wife’s “person, company, and conversation.” This is so because Christ’s delight is the Church, “his Hephzibah” (48). His love is to be chaste and singular, which bars against polygamy: “a man should not have more wives than one, whereby his love would be divided or alienated, and hate the one and love the other, as is commonly the case” (49).  Gill thus reaffirmed the stance of the Second London Confession against polygamy and distanced the Baptist community from the memory of the continental Anabaptists.

In a most tender-hearted section, Gill wrote that the husband is to express his love not only in words, but also “in deed and in truth” because facts “speak louder than words” (50). This is done by providing for her material comforts, including food and clothing. He is also to protect her from harm and is to be a “covering to her, as Abraham was to Sarah” (51). His protection of her is to extend to such a point that he would “risk his life in her defense and for her rescue” (52). The husband should do “every thing that may contribute to her pleasure, peace, comfort, and happi- ness” and be devoted to ways in which “he may please his wife” (53).  Finally, he is to seek her spiritual welfare, especially her conversion if she is not a Christian, and her “spiritual peace, comfort, and edification” (54). When it comes to a husband’s demeanor towards his wife Gill was insistent: “Be not bitter against them; not giving bitter language, threatening words, sour looks, and especially bitter blows; which is cruel,

Gill modeled this tenderness with his own wife. Early in his ministry, Elizabeth experienced a miscar- riage, and Gill devoted much time and energy to see that she was comforted. This became a cause of some trouble in the church, as a number of the women believed that he was spoiling her.56 In her final years, Elizabeth was an invalid, and Gill spent much of his time caring for her. Elizabeth died on October 10, 1764, and eleven days later Gill preached her funeral sermon from Hebrews 11:16. At the end he had planned to give a short account of her life, “but it seems he was so very much overpowered at the end of the sermon, where the account might have been given, that he was not able to deliver it” (57).

In his comment on Ephesians 5:25, Gill stated that “many are the reasons why husbands should love their wives” and proceeded to list them—for instance, they are companions, covenant partners, and their own bodies (58). Likewise, in Body of Divinity he noted the fact that they are one flesh as the first reason for the “nearness” between spouses. The wife is “himself ” and she is to “be loved as his own body.” Second, she is his “help-meet” and companion “in prosperity and adversity” and shares the joys and sorrows of life (59). A third reason is that she is the glory and honour of her husband which makes him respectable among his peers. The fourth reason Gill considered to be “[t]he strongest and most forcible argument of all”: this is the fact of Christ’s love to his Church, “which is the pattern and exemplar of a man’s love to his wife, and most strongly enforces it” (60).

Gill stayed with Paul in Ephesians to enunciate seven duties that wives have toward their husbands: reverence; submission; obedience; assistance; curtailed authority; and steadfastness. Reverence is to be both internal and external: a wife must outwardly show her husband respect as well as think highly of him in her heart because he is given to her by God. Gill’s statements on submission and obedience, which are so controversial today, are both balanced and warm. He took Paul’s words in Ephesians 5:33 about wives submitting in “everything” to mean “relating to family affairs” only. The husband does not have absolute control over his wife (61). More than this, a wife is not to go along with her husband if he does anything “contrary to the laws of God and Christ,” because God is to be obeyed over men. Subjection of the wife to her husband is not to be servile—she is not to be treated like a servant, and even less like a slave. Rather, Gill deemed the picture of the body following the head to be a better analogy: the head governs, but it is to govern wisely, with tenderness and in a “gentle manner” as Abraham did with Sarah(62). In his comment on Ephesians 5:22 Gill stressed that a wife is subject to her husband only, “not to any other man, nor to her children, nor to her servants, or any brought into her house.” Due to this, the wife should render her subjection more easily, willfully, and cheerfully (63).

The main marital function of a wife is to help her husband in the affairs of the family, the “original end of her creation.” She has rule over the home, including the servants (if there are any), and citing 1 Timothy 2:14, Gill pointed out that she is to manage “all domestic business with wisdom and prudence” (64). At this point it might have been useful for Gill to cite Proverbs 31 and the industrious wife who serves her family in busi- ness ventures. As English historian Sharon James rightly observes, Gill’s treatment of wives omitted any discussion of Proverbs 31. When he did interpret it, he fell to allegory: “[T]he whole chapter is seen only as a picture of the Church; and thus he loses sight of the reality of the ideal presented: a powerful woman indeed” (65)! Since the woman is to have no authority over her husband in family affairs, she is to “do nothing without his will and consent, and never contrary to it.” Rather, she is to go “with him wherever God in his providence, and his business in life call him,” just as Sarah did with Abraham in Egypt and Ruth did with Naomi.

In their marriage, Elizabeth Gill took similar charge of her home so that her husband could devote his time to his ministry and writing. In the introductory biography to the Sermons and Tracts, possibly written by John Rippon, Gill’s sentiments about Elizabeth are described thus: “The Doctor was always of opinion, that his mar- riage with this excellent person, was the principal thing for which God in his providence sent him to that place [the church where Gill met her]: and he ever considered his marriage to her, as one of the capital blessings of his life. For she proved affectionate, discreet, and careful: and, by her unremitting prudence, took off from his hands all domestic avocations, so that he could, with more leisure, and greater ease of mind, pursue his studies, and devote himself to his ministerial service” (66).

These uxorial duties are then followed by six reasons—though Gill was sure these are only “some”—as to why she is to perform them. The first is the role given to women at creation. Following Paul in 1 Timothy 2:13, Gill argued that because Adam was formed first, and because Eve was made from Adam, she has a functionally subordinate role, though in his comment on the creation of Eve in Genesis 1, she is fully his equal before God. Second, Eve was deceived by the serpent in the fall and drew her husband into it, and so earned part of the curse for herself. Then, the wife is subject to her husband because he is her head. Sharon James observes that for Gill, male headship “is not to be exercised for the good of the husband, but for the good of the wife; just as Christ, the head of the Church, sacrificed himself for her good” (67). The value of male headship for the wife is seen in his comment on Ephesians 5:24: “[B] eing wholly dependent upon him, and entirely resigned to him, and receiving all from him; who is alone all her expectation of provision, protection, comfort, and hap- piness, wherefore she has respect to all his commands, and esteems all his precepts concerning all things to be right.” Thus she “yields a cheerful, voluntary, sincere, and hearty obedience to them; arising from a principle of love to him, and joined with honor, fear, and reverence of him” (68). Fourth and in this connection, a wife is to recognize that she is the weaker vessel and as such is in need of protection, which is provided by her head.

Fifth, female honor demands that she act in a creditable way. Decency is an ornament to women, “and the best ornament they can deck themselves with” (69). Gill’s sixth and final reason for the wife’s duty to her husband is regarded by him as “the chief argument of all”: it is the subjection of the Church to Christ. In Ephesians 5:22- 24, Paul lays out a typological relationship between husbands and wives, and Christ and the church. Since the wife typifies the Church in her marriage, she is to model godly submission to her husband, who typifies Christ.

It is clear from Gill’s concluding reasons for the duties of the husband and the wife that the gospel is the bedrock of Christian marriage. Since marriage typifies Christ’s relationship with the church, Christians are to strive toward love, companionship, humility, and bal- ance in their marriages. The witness of the gospel is at stake. And from the little that we know of his own marriage to Elizabeth, we see that Gill strove to that end.

A perusal of the minute books of a number of eigh- teenth-century English Baptist congregations would soon reveal the reality of some of the Baptist marriages in that era: marriages marred by sins such as fornication and adultery, wife beating and gossiping. What these records do not reveal is anything about the solid mar- riages that displayed the reality behind the confessional stance of these Baptists (as seen in the Second London Confession) and their theological reflection (as seen in the corpus of Grantham and Gill). since such were not the subject of formal congregational discussions or discipline in local churches. For such materials we need to turn elsewhere. Thankfully, we have a rich resource about one Baptist marriage in this period in the form of letters from Samuel Pearce (1766–1799) to his beloved wife, Sarah Hopkins Pearce (1771–1804).

Samuel Pearce, a close friend and confidant of the well-known William Carey (1761–1834), had one pastorate in his short life, that of Cannon Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in the Midlands. It was there that he met Sarah Hopkins, a third-generation Baptist whose father was a deacon (70), soon after his arrival in Birmingham (71). Pearce was soon deeply in love with Sarah and she with him. As he wrote to her on December 24, 1790, about the impact her letters had on him:

Were I averse to writing,…one of your dear Epistles could not fail of conquering the antipathy and transforming it into desire. The moment I peruse a line from my Sarah, I am inspired at the propensity which never leaves me, till I have thrown open my whole heart, and returned a copy of it to the dear being who long since compelled it to a voluntary surrender, and whose claims have never since been disputed (72).

They were married on February 2, 1791. With delight, Pearce wrote the following day to a friend of his and Sarah’s:

The occasion of my writing is a source of joy inex- pressible to myself—a joy in which I know you will participate. I am no longer a bachelor. Your amiable friend permitted me to call her my own yesterday. One dwelling now contains us both, and Paul’s Square contains that dwelling (73).

Later that same year, during November, she was baptized by her husband (74).

Pearce’s understanding of what should lie at the heart of their marriage found expression in a letter that he wrote to his future wife a little over two months before their wedding: “may my dear Sarah & myself be made the means of leading each other on in the way to the heavenly kingdom and at last there meet to know what even temporary separation means no more” (75). Husband and wife are to be a means of grace to one another in their earthly pilgrimage. In that joint pilgrimage, they are to be, as a recent book on marriage has put it, “intimate allies” (76).

One sees the way in which Pearce sought to help his wife spiritually in the following passage from a letter written on December 2, 1791: “I trust this will find you expecting a good Sabbath & waiting for the day of the Lord with ardent desires after his tabernacle—may your enjoyments equal your desires” (77). He then went on to give his wife some advice about conversing with a Mrs. Briggs, who appears to have fallen prey to Socinianism. He told Sarah:

Avoid any religious controversy with Mrs Briggs—I fear she has more studied system than yielded herself to the influence of truth—you my love I believe have been better employed… I have been much afraid lest she should distress your mind—I am under no apprehensions of her altering your sentiments—I believe you have been taught them by the Holy Ghost who dwelleth in you—& that you will be kept therein by the power of God—but it will pain your mind to hear your Lord degraded & the blood wherewith you were sanctified accounted an unholy thing (78).

In another letter, this one written from Northampton, where he had gone to preach for John Ryland, he encouraged Sarah in a postscript: “Let us both live near to God and our separation from each other will be the less regretted—O be much in prayer for your own S.P” (79).

Pearce’s love for his wife clearly deepened with the passing of the years. In 1791, only a couple of months after their wedding, he told her that he was more desirous “of enjoying your friendship than the admiration of crowds of Helen’s, or Venus’s, or Cleopatra’s, or all the females of Egypt—Greece—Rome or Birmingham” (80). He concluded this letter by telling her: “when I add all the respect, the gratitude, the tenderness, & affection of which my nature is capable into one sum—I feel the whole comes vastly short of what I owe to you my lovely friend! My inestimable Sarah” (81)! In a letter that is undated but that was probably written in early 1792, Pearce concluded it by telling Sarah, “O that you were now within these longing arms & then there would be no occasion to write to your more than ever affectionate S. Pearce” (82). And writing on a preaching trip to Wales in July of 1792, he told his wife, “How often have I longed for your Society since I left you…every pleasant scene which opened to us on our way (& they were very numerous) lost half its beauty because my lovely Sarah was not present to partake its pleasures with me.” He had to remind himself, though, “to see the country was not the immediate object of my visiting Wales—I came to preach the gospel—to tell poor sinners of the dear Lord Jesus—to endeavor to restore the children of misery to the pious pleasures of divine enjoyment” (83).

Again, when his wife was away on a trip to Shropshire, Samuel wrote: “I feel myself such a poor dull solitary thing without you that I fly to my pen that I may at least feel some relief in writing to the dearest Friend I have whilst I am deprived the felicity of her presence and conversation.” Three and a half years after their marriage, he wrote to her from Plymouth: “O, my Sarah, had I as much proof of my love to Christ as I have of my love to you, I should prize it above rubies” (84). When Pearce was away from his wife the following year, 1795, on a preaching trip in London, he wrote to tell her, “every day improves not only my tenderness but my esteem for you. Called as I now am to mingle much with society in all its orders I have daily opportunity of making remarks on human tem- per & after all I have seen and thought my judgment as well as my affection still approves of you as the best of women for me” (85). On the same trip he called her “the dearest of women—my invaluable Sarah” (86). In another letter written about the same time he informed the one whom he called the “partner of my heart” that his letter was a “forerunner of her impatient husband who weary with so long an absence”—he had obviously been away from home for a few weeks—“[longs] again to embrace his dearest friend” (87). The following year, when he was involved in an extensive preaching trip in Ireland, he wrote to his wife from Dublin on June 24:

Last evening …were my eyes delighted at the sight of a letter from my dear Sarah…I rejoice that you, as well as myself, find that “absence diminishes not affection.” For my part I com- pare our present correspondence to a kind of courtship, rendered sweeter than what usually bears that name by a certainty of success …Not less than when I sought your hand [in marriage], do I now court your heart, nor doth the security of possessing you at all lessen my pleasure at the prospect of calling you my own, when we meet again.” And then towards the end of the letter he added: “O our dear fireside! When shall we sit down toe to toe, and tete á tete [sic] again—Not a long time I hope will elapse ere I re-enjoy that felicity (88).

That Sarah felt the same towards Samuel is seen in a letter she wrote after her husband’s death to her sister Rebecca. Rebecca had just been married to a Mr. Harris and Sarah prayed that she might “enjoy the most uninterrupted Happiness…(for indeed I can scarce form an idia [sic]…this side of Heaven of greater) equal to what I have enjoyed” (89). It is a shame that none of Sarah’s letters to Samuel have survived, though Sarah did admit she had “a natural disinclination” to writing letters,90 which may mean that there was considerably less correspondence from her to Samuel than there was from him to her.

One final word about Samuel and Sarah’s mar- riage needs to be said. What especially delighted Pearce about his wife was her Christian piety. For example, he told Sarah in the summer of 1793 in response to a letter he had received from her: “I cannot convey to you an idea of the holy rapture I felt at the account you gave me of your soul prosperity” (91). Close friends of Sarah noted that since her conver- sion she had had “a strong attachment to evangelical truth” and “a longing desire for the universal spread of the gospel” (92). And by her own admission, she was “deeply interested in all that interested” Samuel (93).

Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Baptist talk and thinking about marriage was not merely that and no more. It was translated into concrete reality and truth by marriages like that of Samuel and Sarah Pearce. Today we desperately need such models—and the thought that undergirds them—for our world supposes marriage to be but an artifact that has been shaped by the hands of human culture and hence can be re-shaped at will. The Baptist authors whose writings and doings have been examined above, however, remind us that marriage contains both an esse and a bene esse, and that both are divinely given.

ENDNOTES

(1) Samuel Stennett, Discourses on Domestick Duties (London, 1783), 140. In this article, seventeenth-century texts have been modernized with regard to their spelling and capitalization.

(2) Prompting this statement was Alan Hayes’ recent comment that “the vocation of clergy wife was one of the significant gifts that the Reformation gave the Church” (“In Memoriam: Margaret Eleanor Allman Stackhouse,” Insight 73 (Summer 2012): 11.

(3) Relatively little research has been done with regard to seventeenth and eighteenth-century English Bap- tist thinking about and experience of marriage. For a monograph focused upon the Sussex General Baptists, see John Caffyn, Sussex Believers: Baptist marriage in the 17th and 18th centuries (Worthing, West Sussex: Churchman Publishing, 1988). For a very helpful summary of seventeenth-century attitudes, see B.R. White, The English Baptists of the Seventeenth Century (A History of the English Baptists, vol.1; Rev. ed.; Didcot, Oxfordshire: The Baptist Historical Society, 1996), 139–145.

(4) This essay will cite the rendition of this confession in William L. Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith, revised edition (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1989), 235-294. For a modern reprint, see A Faith to Confess: The Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689: Rewritten in Modern English (1689; repr., Sussex: Carey Publications, 1982). This confession was adopted with very slight modi fication by the Philadelphia Association—the oldest Baptist Association in the United States—and renamed the Philadelphia Confession (1742). It was also used by the influential Charleston Association in South Carolina and so exercised a huge influence upon Southern Baptist life and thought. The Abstract of Principles (1858) of The Southern Baptist Theo- logical Seminary is a summary of this confession. See Michael A.G. Haykin, Roger D. Duke and A. James Fuller, Soldiers of Christ: Selections from the Writings of Basil Manly, Sr., & Basil Manly, Jr. (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2009), 36–40.

(5) Samuel E. Waldron, A Modern Exposition of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith (3rd ed.; Darlington, UK: Evangelical Press, 2005), 300–301.

(6) Benjamin Keach, The Articles of the Faith of the Church of Christ (London, 1697), 35.

(7) Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith, 284.

(8) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700 (London: Allen Lane, 2003), 651.

(9) Edmund Leites, “The Duty to Desire: Love, Friend- ship, and Sexuality in Some Puritan Theories of Marriage,” Journal of Social History 15 (1981–1982): 384.

(10) Cf. Michael. G. Lawler, Marriage and the Catholic Church: Disputed Questions (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 2002), viii.

(11) MacCulloch, Reformation, 648–650.

(12) Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith, 284–285.

(13) Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith, 285.

(14) See also White, English Baptists of the Seventeenth Century, 140–143, for further discussion of Baptist thinking about this issue.

(15) Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith, 285.

(16) For Grantham, see Samuel Edward Hester, “Advancing Christianity to Its Primitive Excellency: The Quest of Thomas Grantham, Early English General Baptist (1634–1692)” (Th.D. diss., New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 1977); J. Matthew Pinson, “The Diversity of Arminian Soteriology: Thomas Grantham, John Goodwin, and Jacobus Arminius” (unpublished paper, American Society of Church History, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, Spring 1998); and John D. Inscore Essick, Jr., “Messen- ger, Apologist, and Nonconformist: An Examination of Thomas Grantham’s Leadership among the Seventeenth-Century General Baptists” (Ph.D. diss., Baylor University, 2008).

(17) Christianismus Primitivus: or, The Ancient Christian Religion (London: Francis Smith, 1678), III.6.1 (page 37).

(18) Christianismus Primitivus III.6.1–2 (pages 37–40).

(19) Christianismus Primitivus III.6.3 (page 41).

(20) Christianismus Primitivus III.12.1–2 (pages 61–66).

(21) Christianismus Primitivus III.12.3 (pages 62, 63).

(22) MacCulloch, Reformation, 615–619.

(23) Truth and Peace; or, The Last and most Friendly Debate concerning Infant-Baptism (London, 1689), 80.

(24) Truth and Peace, 80, 83–87. Quote from page 86.

(25) Truth and Peace, 75–76.

(26) Truth and Peace, 76–77.

(27) Later, Grantham lists marriage among God’s “holy ordinances” (Truth and Peace, 90).

(28) For more on Gill see John Rippon, A Brief Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Late John Gill, D.D. (1838 ed.; repr., Harrisonburg, VA: Gano Books, 1992); Robert W. Oliver “John Gill (1697–1771): His Life and Ministry” in Michael A.G. Haykin ed., The Life and Thought of John Gill (1697–1771): A Tercentennial Appreciation (Leiden/New York/Koln: E. J. Brill, 1997), 6–50; and Robert W. Oliver, “John Gill (1697–1771)” in Michael A.G. Haykin ed., The British Particular Baptists 1638-1910 (Springfield, MO: Particular Baptist Press, 1998), 1:145–166.

(29) Rippon, Memoir, 111.

(30) Rippon, Memoir, 137.

(31) While there are a number of recent reprints, this essay quotes from the third volume of John Gill, A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures New Edition (London: W. Winterbotham, 1796). It is noteworthy that in terms of sources for the section on marriage, Gill refers only to Scripture. The only non-biblical reference is a footnote where he quotes Seneca.

(32) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:400.

(33) John Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament Both Doctrinal and Practical (London: George Keith, 1774), 1:274. Comment on Matthew 19:6.

(34) John Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament Both Doctrinal and Practical (London: George Keith, 1775), 3:461.

(35) Gill, Exposition of the New Testament, 1:62.

(36) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:400.

(37) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:400.

(38) John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament (London: George Keith, 1763), 1:10.

(39) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:400.

(40) In his comment on Genesis 2:21 Gill notes Adam’s surprise at awakening to meet Eve for the first time: Adam was put to sleep so “that he might be the more surprised at the sight of her, just awaking out of sleep, to see so lovely an object, so much like himself, and made out of himself, and in so short a time, as whilst he was taking a comfortable nap” (Exposition of the Old Testament, 1:19).

(41) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:400–401.

(42) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:401.

(43) John Flood, Representations of Eve in Antiquity and the English Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2011), 14.

(44) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:401. Gill did not come down strong on whether “increase and multiply” is an express command. At the very least it is advice for the increase of mankind and the filling of the earth. Gill Exposition of the Old Testament, 1:10.

(45) Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament, 1:19.

(46) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:401.

(47) Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament, 1:19.

(48) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:401.

(49) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:401.

(50) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:401.

(51) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:402.

(52) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:402.

(53) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:402.

(54) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:402.

(55) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:402.

(56) Sharon James, “‘The Weaker Vessel’: John Gill’s Reflections on Women, Marriage and Divorce,” in Michael A.G. Haykin ed., The Life and Thought of John Gill (1697–1771): A Tercentennial Appreciation (Leiden/ New York/Koln: E. J. Brill, 1997), 217.

(57) Rippon, Memoir, 10. The sermon was printed in Sermons and Tracts, and includes a footnote reprinting an unpublished manuscript found in Gill’s study with his thoughts on Elizabeth’s death. John Gill, A Collection of Sermons and Tracts in Two Volumes (London: George Keith, 1773), 1:578–579.

(58) John Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament Both Doctrinal and Practical (London: George Keith, 1774), 4:289.

(59) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:402–403.

(60) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:403.

(61) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:403.

(62) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:403.

(63) Gill, Exposition of the New Testament, 4:288.

(64) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:403.

(65) James, “Weaker Vessel,” 219.

(66) Gill, Sermons and Tracts, 1:xiv.

(67) James, “Weaker Vessel,” 217.

(68) Gill, Exposition of the New Testament, 288-289.

(69) Gill, Body of Divinity, 3:404.

(70) Her father was Joshua Hopkins (d.1798), a grocer and a deacon in Alcester Baptist Church, Warwickshire, for close to thirty years. Her maternal grandfather was John Ash (1724–1779), pastor of the Baptist cause in Pershore, Worcestershire, and a noteworthy Baptist minister of the eighteenth century.

(71) [Andrew Fuller?], “Memoir of Mrs. Pearce”, The Theological and Biblical Magazine 5 (1805), 1.

(72) Letter to Sarah Hopkins, December 24, 1790 (Pearce-Carey Correspondence 1790–1828, Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford).

(73) Letter, February 3, 1791 (cited Joseph Belcher, “The Wife of Samuel Pearce”, The Mothers Journal and Fam- ily Visitant, 19 [1854], 12). St Paul’s Square, so-named because of the Anglican church at its centre, contains probably the finest example of surviving Georgian architecture in Birmingham today. In Pearce’s day, its architectural elegance made it a much-sought-after locale in which to live.

(74) “Memoir of Mrs. Pearce”, 1.

(75) Letter to Sarah Hopkins, November 26, 1790 (Samuel Pearce Carey Collection-Pearce Family Letters, Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford).

(76)  Dan B. Allender and Tremper Longman III, Intimate Allies (Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House, 1995).

(77) Letter to Sarah Pearce, December 2, 1791 (Samuel Pearce Mss., FPC D55, Angus Library, Regent’s Park College University of Oxford).

(78) Letter (Samuel to Sarah Pearce, December 2, 1791 Pearce Mss.).

(79) Letter (Samuel to Sarah Pearce, August 23, 1792 Pearce Mss.).

(80) Letter (Samuel to Sarah Pearce, April 1, 1791 Pearce Mss.).

(81) Letter (Samuel to Sarah Pearce, April 1, 1791 Pearce Mss.).

(82) Letter to Sarah Pearce (Samuel Pearce Mss.).

(83) Letter to Sarah Pearce, July 11, 1792 (Samuel Pearce Mss.).

(84) S. Pearce Carey, “Love Letters of Samuel Pearce”, The Baptist Quarterly, 8 (1936–1937), 96.

(85) Letter (Samuel to Sarah Pearce, September 7, 1795 Pearce Mss.).

(86) Letter (Samuel to Sarah Pearce, August 31, 1795 Pearce Mss.).

(87) Letter (Samuel  to Sarah Pearce, September 7, 1795 Pearce Mss.).

(88) Letter (Samuel to Sarah Pearce, June 24, 1796 Pearce Mss.).

(89) Letter (Samuel to Rebecca Harris, March 29, 1800 Pearce Mss.).

(90) Sarah Pearce, Letter to William Rogers, June 16, 1801 (“Original Letters, of the Rev. Samuel Pearce”, The Religious Remembrancer [October 1, 1814], 19).

(91) Letter to Sarah Pearce, June 14, 1793 (Samuel Pearce Mss.).

(92) “Memoir of Mrs. Pearce”, 1–2.

(93) Sarah Pearce, Letter to William Rogers, June 16, 1801.

[Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in The Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry 3.1 (2012).]

In a new book, The Demise of Guys: Why Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It, psychologists Philip Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan say we may lose an entire generation of men to pornography and video gaming addictions. Their concern isn’t about morality, but instead about the nature of these addictions in reshaping the pattern of desires necessary for community.

If you’re addicted to sugar or tequila or heroin you want more and more of that substance. But porn and video games both are built on novelty, on the quest for newer and different experiences. That’s why you rarely find a man addicted to a single pornographic image. He’s entrapped in an ever-expanding kaleidoscope.

There’s a key difference between porn and gaming. Pornography can’t be consumed in moderation because it is, by definition, immoral. A video game can be a harmless diversion along the lines of a low-stakes athletic competition. But the compulsive form of gaming shares a key element with porn: both are meant to simulate something, something for which men long.

Pornography promises orgasm without intimacy. Video warfare promises adrenaline without danger. The arousal that makes these so attractive is ultimately spiritual to the core.

Satan isn’t a creator but a plagiarist. His power is parasitic, latching on to good impulses and directing them toward his own purpose. God intends a man to feel the wildness of sexuality in the self-giving union with his wife. And a man is meant to, when necessary, fight for his family, his people, for the weak and vulnerable who are being oppressed.

The drive to the ecstasy of just love and to the valor of just war are gospel matters. The sexual union pictures the cosmic mystery of the union of Christ and his church. The call to fight is grounded in a God who protects his people, a Shepherd Christ who grabs his sheep from the jaws of the wolves.

When these drives are directed toward the illusion of ever-expanding novelty, they kill joy. The search for a mate is good, but blessedness isn’t in the parade of novelty before Adam. It is in finding the one who is fitted for him, and living with her in the mission of cultivating the next generation. When necessary, it is right to fight. But God’s warfare isn’t forever novel. It ends in a supper, and in a perpetual peace.

Moreover, these addictions foster the seemingly opposite vices of passivity and hyper-aggression. The porn addict becomes a lecherous loser, with one-flesh union supplanted by masturbatory isolation. The video game addict becomes a pugilistic coward, with other-protecting courage supplanted by aggression with no chance of losing one’s life. In both cases, one seeks the sensation of being a real lover or a real fighter, but venting one’s reproductive or adrenal glands over pixilated images, not flesh and blood for which one is responsible.

Zimbardo and Duncan are right, this is a generation mired in fake love and fake war, and that is dangerous. A man who learns to be a lover through porn will simultaneously love everyone and no one. A man obsessed with violent gaming can learn to fight everyone and no one.

The answer to both addictions is to fight arousal with arousal. Set forth the gospel vision of a Christ who loves his bride and who fights to save her. And then let’s train our young men to follow Christ by learning to love a real woman, sometimes by fighting his own desires and the spirit beings who would eat him up. Let’s teach our men to make love, and to make war … for real.

[Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in The Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry 3.1 (2012).]

About the Author: Russell D. Moore (Ph.D., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is dean of the School of Theology and senior vice president for academic administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also serves as professor of Christian theology and ethics. He is the author of several books, including The Kingdom of Christ, Adopted for Life, and Tempted and Tried. A native Mississippian, he and his wife Maria live in Louisville with their five sons.