While Protestants do not view marriage as a sacrament, their tradition seems to hold a somewhat lower view of marriage, seeing it as more instrumental and symbolic rather than liturgical or as a means of spiritual sanctification, which is unattainable in non-Christian marriages.
Thanks for this compelling article. I understand our reformed church’s reason to not make marriage a sacrament, citing as we would the absence of command, but that arguably did result in an increased degradation that has not stood up well against an increased secularism.
Some might argue a desacralized church aided and abetted secularism. Have we in the Protestant tradition suffered in demanding simple and obvious commands over searching wisdom and discerning mystery?
Yes. Throw in a lower (or undeveloped) view of the body-soul unity, and we get some oddly inconsistent views of sexuality and procreation in evangelical marriage, too. Being able to separate the unitive and procreative aspects of sex results in not only all manner of contraception being acceptable, but also many evangelicals not batting an eye at the use of degrading artificial reproductive technologies. We get to pick and choose which parts of sexuality to keep at any given time (unity or procreation)... chucking the rest when it's inconvenient... which is a bit embarrassing when the same people try to "uphold traditional views of sex, marriage, and gender" in a culture already profoundly confused about how to think about the body. Compared to Catholic teaching upholding what's sacred in clearly defined terms, much evangelical moral & spiritual formation regarding our bodies falls embarrassingly flat (and like you said, utilitarian).
Such a good point. I think it's also hard for defend the Protestant view against secular utilitarian views. If it's not scared, it's hard to know what's different.
It is very unfortunate that this article conflates ‘The Gospel Coalition’ with ‘Evangelicalism’ and ‘Protestants’. It would be interesting to have this conversation without that confusion. The Gospel Coalition view is neither evangelical nor protestant, it is modern, shallow, and anti-Scriptural.
Speaking as a Reformed Baptist, their view is embarrassing. I would love to discuss it further, and get into such actual protestants as John Gill, Matthew Henry, and John Calvin. Along with Martin Luther.
"Speaking as a Reformed Baptist" . . . My guess is that your view would be even lower since you all reject covenant theology and believe that the children on believers should be blocked from the sacrament of baptism and treated as outsiders/pagans until children perform a religious work. See Scott Clark for more. I'm convinced that a tradition that gets the sacraments wrong would have a robust view of marriage. The details are here. https://heidelblog.net/baptism/
Actually Reformed Baptists are very strong on covenant theology.
We do hold that the only proper subjects of baptism are those who have confessed faith (or, as in the NT, have it confessed for them by the Holy Spirit), but this can be of whatever age. Tis true we rarely see infants confessing faith, but it is not their infant-ness which keeps them from baptism, it is their lack of confession :)
However we are very strong on covenant, including the family covenant membership.
I have written extensively on the incredibly importance and sacredness of marriage, and would be glad to discuss it cross post.
A couple mistakes in your post: Reformed Baptists are much, much closer to your view than the ordinary Gospel Coalition person. Way closer.
And I think your last sentence has a typo. You seem to say that someone who gets the sacrements wrong WOULD have a robust view of marriage. I think you meant to say ‘would not’, no?
Surely you must have read Calvin and Luther on Baptism. Neither, Calvin especially, took kindly to forbidding infants Covenant baptism, they being actual Protestants.
As I say, Reformed Baptists don't forbid infants. We hold that the proper subjects of Baptism are those who have confessed faith, of whatever age.
Here is a little thing I worked up a few years ago, if it interests you:
Let me say that a man brought his family to our church. His name is ‘Abraham’, but he asks us to call him ‘Abe’.
Abraham has an interesting family. He is there with his eleven children, ages 24 to three months. His widowed sister lives with him, along with her five children. His oldest son is married, and has three children, and they also live with him. He proudly introduces us to his entire household.
Anyway so Abe comes up to me after the service, while we wait in line to get food, and he tells me his story. A new believer, he and his household just moved here from foreign climes.
As a new believer Abe is wondering about baptism. “Can I be baptised?” he asks me. To which I answer, “If you believe.”
And then he asks me, “How about the rest of my household…?”
Ah, now here’s the rub. I, as a credo baptist, have an easy answer: “If they believe.” But what is the paedo-baptist answer?
I would baptise Abe, and his wife, and his sons, and his daughters, and their children, and the sister, and her children… if they believed. That is, if they confessed belief in Christ. If they expressed a desire to obey God in baptism, and confessed their belief. But none would be compelled, none would be commanded.
But what of the paedo-baptist? What if the entire family, other than Abe, denies the faith. Sure, they’re willing to be baptised if Abe commands them: he is the patriarch after all, and what’s a little water? But if we ask them to tell us, honestly, if they believe…? Sorry, not so much. Or maybe one or two do.
The ‘evidence’ for paedo-baptism is not evidence for ‘infant baptism’. It is evidence for ‘patri-baptism’ (father-ruler baptism) or ‘oiko-baptism’ (household baptism). If the analogy to circmcision holds, if baptism replaces circumcision and applies to entire householods, then baptism is a command to the father of the family; a command which includes his wife, all of his children, their children, his sister living with them, her children.
When Joshua said ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord’, this is what he meant. And, to the extent they were males, that is who he would circumcise. But that is not who we are commanded to baptise.
Your scenario does not strengthen your credo-baptist position. You work into it a possibility there are some in Abe’s family who deny the faith. An infant can no more deny the faith than confess faith. Anymore than an eight day old boy could embrace or reject the Covenant, though they were rightly given “the seal of the righteousness of the faith which he (Abraham) had while still uncircumcised . . . “ ; It is a sign and seal of faith.
You would necessarily forbid infants who, unless very exceptional, cannot confess faith.
Again, I do not 'deny baptism'. We hold that those are to be baptised who confess faith. That is where our analysis starts: did they confess faith?
But I would be interested in your answer to the rest of the story. Who would you baptise in that circumstance? Would you baptise the wife, who denied faith but was willing to be baptise?
You do remember that when Abraham was circumcised, so were all the men in his household, not just Isaac. Ishmael was circumcised, his slaves were circumcised, their children were circumcised. Would you baptise them, even though they do not claim faith?
Thanks for this compelling article. I understand our reformed church’s reason to not make marriage a sacrament, citing as we would the absence of command, but that arguably did result in an increased degradation that has not stood up well against an increased secularism.
Some might argue a desacralized church aided and abetted secularism. Have we in the Protestant tradition suffered in demanding simple and obvious commands over searching wisdom and discerning mystery?
So true!
Yes. Throw in a lower (or undeveloped) view of the body-soul unity, and we get some oddly inconsistent views of sexuality and procreation in evangelical marriage, too. Being able to separate the unitive and procreative aspects of sex results in not only all manner of contraception being acceptable, but also many evangelicals not batting an eye at the use of degrading artificial reproductive technologies. We get to pick and choose which parts of sexuality to keep at any given time (unity or procreation)... chucking the rest when it's inconvenient... which is a bit embarrassing when the same people try to "uphold traditional views of sex, marriage, and gender" in a culture already profoundly confused about how to think about the body. Compared to Catholic teaching upholding what's sacred in clearly defined terms, much evangelical moral & spiritual formation regarding our bodies falls embarrassingly flat (and like you said, utilitarian).
Such a good point. I think it's also hard for defend the Protestant view against secular utilitarian views. If it's not scared, it's hard to know what's different.
Why is the gospel coalition = the evangelical view?
It doesn't. There's no such thing "the" evangelical view, but this is an approximation given the sources used in the article.
It is very unfortunate that this article conflates ‘The Gospel Coalition’ with ‘Evangelicalism’ and ‘Protestants’. It would be interesting to have this conversation without that confusion. The Gospel Coalition view is neither evangelical nor protestant, it is modern, shallow, and anti-Scriptural.
Speaking as a Reformed Baptist, their view is embarrassing. I would love to discuss it further, and get into such actual protestants as John Gill, Matthew Henry, and John Calvin. Along with Martin Luther.
"Speaking as a Reformed Baptist" . . . My guess is that your view would be even lower since you all reject covenant theology and believe that the children on believers should be blocked from the sacrament of baptism and treated as outsiders/pagans until children perform a religious work. See Scott Clark for more. I'm convinced that a tradition that gets the sacraments wrong would have a robust view of marriage. The details are here. https://heidelblog.net/baptism/
Actually Reformed Baptists are very strong on covenant theology.
We do hold that the only proper subjects of baptism are those who have confessed faith (or, as in the NT, have it confessed for them by the Holy Spirit), but this can be of whatever age. Tis true we rarely see infants confessing faith, but it is not their infant-ness which keeps them from baptism, it is their lack of confession :)
However we are very strong on covenant, including the family covenant membership.
I have written extensively on the incredibly importance and sacredness of marriage, and would be glad to discuss it cross post.
A couple mistakes in your post: Reformed Baptists are much, much closer to your view than the ordinary Gospel Coalition person. Way closer.
And I think your last sentence has a typo. You seem to say that someone who gets the sacrements wrong WOULD have a robust view of marriage. I think you meant to say ‘would not’, no?
Anyway, would love to keep up the dialogue.
Surely you must have read Calvin and Luther on Baptism. Neither, Calvin especially, took kindly to forbidding infants Covenant baptism, they being actual Protestants.
As I say, Reformed Baptists don't forbid infants. We hold that the proper subjects of Baptism are those who have confessed faith, of whatever age.
Here is a little thing I worked up a few years ago, if it interests you:
Let me say that a man brought his family to our church. His name is ‘Abraham’, but he asks us to call him ‘Abe’.
Abraham has an interesting family. He is there with his eleven children, ages 24 to three months. His widowed sister lives with him, along with her five children. His oldest son is married, and has three children, and they also live with him. He proudly introduces us to his entire household.
Anyway so Abe comes up to me after the service, while we wait in line to get food, and he tells me his story. A new believer, he and his household just moved here from foreign climes.
As a new believer Abe is wondering about baptism. “Can I be baptised?” he asks me. To which I answer, “If you believe.”
And then he asks me, “How about the rest of my household…?”
Ah, now here’s the rub. I, as a credo baptist, have an easy answer: “If they believe.” But what is the paedo-baptist answer?
I would baptise Abe, and his wife, and his sons, and his daughters, and their children, and the sister, and her children… if they believed. That is, if they confessed belief in Christ. If they expressed a desire to obey God in baptism, and confessed their belief. But none would be compelled, none would be commanded.
But what of the paedo-baptist? What if the entire family, other than Abe, denies the faith. Sure, they’re willing to be baptised if Abe commands them: he is the patriarch after all, and what’s a little water? But if we ask them to tell us, honestly, if they believe…? Sorry, not so much. Or maybe one or two do.
The ‘evidence’ for paedo-baptism is not evidence for ‘infant baptism’. It is evidence for ‘patri-baptism’ (father-ruler baptism) or ‘oiko-baptism’ (household baptism). If the analogy to circmcision holds, if baptism replaces circumcision and applies to entire householods, then baptism is a command to the father of the family; a command which includes his wife, all of his children, their children, his sister living with them, her children.
When Joshua said ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord’, this is what he meant. And, to the extent they were males, that is who he would circumcise. But that is not who we are commanded to baptise.
Your scenario does not strengthen your credo-baptist position. You work into it a possibility there are some in Abe’s family who deny the faith. An infant can no more deny the faith than confess faith. Anymore than an eight day old boy could embrace or reject the Covenant, though they were rightly given “the seal of the righteousness of the faith which he (Abraham) had while still uncircumcised . . . “ ; It is a sign and seal of faith.
You would necessarily forbid infants who, unless very exceptional, cannot confess faith.
Again, I do not 'deny baptism'. We hold that those are to be baptised who confess faith. That is where our analysis starts: did they confess faith?
But I would be interested in your answer to the rest of the story. Who would you baptise in that circumstance? Would you baptise the wife, who denied faith but was willing to be baptise?
You do remember that when Abraham was circumcised, so were all the men in his household, not just Isaac. Ishmael was circumcised, his slaves were circumcised, their children were circumcised. Would you baptise them, even though they do not claim faith?