The Question

In Christian circles today, if we ask “What does God intend for marriage?” many leap from their seats to answer, guns blazing, running to the rescue of one ideology or another. Some of these theological desperadoes may fire more accurately and efficiently than others, but in the end the place invariably gets shot up with our interpretations of Scripture, and somebody ends up getting hurt. This is because we typically address the question as criminals, as those who would attempt to steal the answer from God.

As Lutherans—no, as Christians—we should know better. Lutherans are taught that God’s intention becomes known to us through God’s revelation in the crucified and risen Christ. God’s intention is revealed through suffering and the cross, through faithful engagement with the lives of God’s people as they are lived. This revelation is both the beginning and the end of our theology, and so it must form the beginning and end of whatever it is that we call “Christian marriage.”

Therefore we wish to drop the inherent pretension of the question, “What does God want us to do with marriage?” and instead ask, “What is God already doing with marriage?” If our justification is by faith alone—if it is true, as Luther writes, that this doctrine “alone begets, nourishes, builds, preserves, and defends”—then we realize that God’s work in human marriage is out ahead of us. God’s work is not confined to those structures we presume are the spaces of divine operation, but is active outside and beyond our road maps for God. New signs of life are frequently found in unexpected places.

It is thus within a framework of wonderment, excitement, and expectation that we ask the question: “What is God doing with marriage?”

Click here for a report of our discussion.

"The Changing Institution of Marriage"
Tim Pippert, Assoicate Professor of Sociology, Augsburg College

"The 'Biblical View' of Marriage"
Carolyn Pressler, Harry C. Piper Professor of Biblical Interpretation,
United Theological Seminary of the
Twin Cities
(article not available online; buy the book!)

A view from a Parent Educator and Practical Theologian:
"We Got to Be There"
Marilyn Sharpe, Director of Christian Parenting and Intergenerational Ministry at The Youth & Family Institute (Bloomington, MN)