Book of the Month/August

This is a book that needs to be carefully read by every pastor and Christian leader. We live in a time that cries out for careful definitions for just about everything, and this book supplies us with a careful definition of marriage.

It does so in the realm of common grace. In other words, the arguments here are philosophical, historical, and sociological, not exegetical. But what they argue is fully consistent with Scripture, and I believe the book helpfully addresses some areas that exegetical arguments frequently do not.

In other words, the “traditional” view of marriage should not be understood as a practice of marriage on autopilot, with no one quite knowing what they were doing or why. The issues before us now have been thoroughly dealt with over the course of centuries, and the modern novelties simply have not done their homework. Fortunately for them, homework is not necessary if the approach you are taking is that of raw judicial tyranny.

For example, the ancient Greeks had the same basic understanding of marriage as modern traditionalists do, while at the same time celebrating homo-eroticism. This means that while they did not have a scriptural understanding of sexual morality, they did define marriage correctly — and that definition cannot simply be dismissed (in secular terms) as “homophobic.” In a similar way, how can it be “homophobic” to say that two men cannot consummate a marriage by means of (say) fellatio, when the tradition has always consistently held that a heterosexual couple cannot consummate a marriage that way either?

This is a very helpful book. Even in those places where I might find myself differing with something, I found the reasoning here to be careful, judicious, and on point.

“Rigorously pursued, the logic of rejecting the conjugal conception of marriage thus leads, by way of formlessness, toward pointlessness” (p. 21).